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LECTURES ON 
THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 



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LECTURES 



ON THE 



AMERICAF CIVIL WAR 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY 

OF OXFORD IN EASTER AND 

TRINITY TERMS 1912 



BY 
JAMES FORD RHODES, LL.D., D.Litt. 

LECTCREK ON THE HISTORY AND INSTITUTIONS OF THE UNITED STATES 

OF AMERICA, 1912 ; AUTHOR OF THE HISTORY OF THE 

UNITED STATES FROM THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 

TO THE FINAL RESTORATION OF HOME RULE AT 

THE SOUTH IN 1877 ', HISTORICAL ESSAYS 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1913 

All rights reserved 



i<1 



Copyright, 1913, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1913. 



Norfaooli ^wsss 

J. S. Gushing Co. — Berwick «fc Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



C:C(,A332347 



CHARLES HARDING FIRTH 

BEGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN" HISTORY 

IN THE 

UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD 



PEEFACE 

I READ these Lectures in the Schools before the 
University of Oxford during May 1912. They 
are printed as read with no very important ex- 
ceptions. A few paragraphs and sentences as 
originally written were omitted in the reading 
to keep within the conventional fifty-five min- 
utes ; these are here restored. The account of 
Pickett's Charge in Lecture III has been ex- 
panded for the sake of greater clearness ; likewise 
my story of Grant's Vicksburg campaign which, 
as read in Oxford, was excessively compressed. 

The work of literary revision of the Lectures 
has been entrusted to my son, Daniel P. Rhodes, 
to whom, amongst other changes, I owe the re- 
writing of the Pickett Charge and the Vicksburg 
campaign. 

Footnote references, in which only volume and 
page numbers are given, are to my History of the 
United States from the Compromise of 1850 to 
the Final Restoration of Home Rule at the South 
in 1877. 

I have had the further benefit of a critical sur- 
vey by David M. Matteson ; to him I owe the 



viii PREFACE 

plan of the map which shows the country at two 
different dates — an undertaking fraught with con- 
siderable difficulties. For the careful execution 
of the map I am indebted to George P. Brett. 

The syllabus of the Lectures serves as a Table 
of Contents. 

Boston, December, 1912. 



CONTENTS 

LECTURE I 

PAGES 

Antecedents of the American Civil War 1850-1860 1-64; 
Cause of the War, slavery. Illustrated by the pre- 
vious tariff dispute and the later one about free silver. 
The existence of negro slavery a grave condition. 
Antecedents of the Civil War. Affairs in 1850. 
Dispute regarding status of territory acquired from 
Mexico. California decided against slavery. This 
decision disappointed the South. Relative greater 
progress of the North. Difference of opinion regard- 
ing slavery North and South. Abolitionist agitation. 
Demands of the South. Compromise of 1850. Fugi- 
tive Slave Law induced Uncle Tom's Cabin. This 
novel's great influence. Missouri Compromise of 1820 
repealed by action of Senator Douglas. The Repeal 
considered an outrage by the North and resulted in 
the formation of the Republican party. Political ex- 
citement in 1854. Repeal brought on a contest be- 
tween slavery and freedom for the possession of 
Kansas. Murder and robbery. Kansas of 1856 wel- 
tered in blood and anarchy. Senate and House dif- 
fered about Kansas. Presidential canvass of 1856. 
Democrats elected Buchanan. Unscrupulous effort 
to make Kansas a slave State by the Lecompton Con- 
stitution. Douglas set himself in opposition to his 
party. Kansas by popular vote decided for freedom. 
Lincoln contested the senatorship of Illinois with 
Douglas. HLs House-divided-against-itself doctrine. 
Character of Lincoln. Lincoln-Douglas debates in 
Illinois attracted the attention of the country. Doug- 
las elected senator. Irrepressible conflict between 
freedom and slavery. John Brown's attack on slav- 
ery. Excitement in Congress. Breach in the Demo- 
cratic party 1860. Lincoln's election as President, 
ix 



X CONTENTS 

LECTURE II 

From Lincoln's Election, 1860, to his Proclamation 

OF Emancipation, 1862 65-130 

Lincoln's election a sectional triumph. On account 
of it South Carolina seceded. Congress tried to pre- 
vent further secessions. The Crittenden Compromise 
would probably have stayed the secession movement. 
Congress failed to adopt it on account of Lincoln's 
objection. How the Civil War might have been pre- 
vented. Six cotton States followed South Carolina's 
example and adopted ordinances of secession. The 
apology for secession. Right of secession invoked 
for the protection of slavery. As a political expedient, 
secession was unwise. Secession a popular movement, 
impelling the leaders. Southern Confederacy formed 
by seven cotton States. Jefferson Davis elected presi- 
dent. Corner-stone of new government rested upon 
slavery. Difficulty of abolishing slavery. Choice of 
the North. Peaceable separation or war. Lincoln in- 
augurated. South fired on United States flag at 
Fort Sumter. Uprising of the North. Similar up- 
rising in the South. Secession of four additional 
Southern States. Twenty-three States against eleven. 
Twenty-two million people against nine million. Ad- 
vantages and Disadvantages of each section. The 
great asset of the North, Lincoln ; of the South, Rob- 
ert E. Lee. Character of Lee. Defeat of the North- 
ern army at Bull Run. Second uprising of the North. 
General McClellan. Ulysses S. Grant's victory in the 
Southwest. Fight between the Merrimac and the 
Monitor. Capture of New Orleans. Lee commander 
of Army of Northern Virginia. Caused the failure 
of McClellan's campaign against Richmond. Dejec- 
tion in the North. Lee gave the Northern army 
another crushing defeat. Alarm for the safety of 
Washington. Lee invaded Maryland. McClellan 
defeated Lee at Antietam. Action of Congress 
against slavery. Lincoln's Proclamation of Emanci- 
pation. 



CONTENTS xi 

LECTURE III 

PAOKS 

From the Proclamation of Emancipation, 1862, to 

Surrender at Appomattox, 1865 . . . 131-195 

First response of the couutry to Proclamation of 
Emancipation unfavorable. Policy completed by 
Proclamation of January 1, 1863. Proclamation did 
not excite servile insurrection. Lincoln pleaded for 
gradual emancipation with compensation. McClellan 
removed. Burnside met with a crushing defeat by 
Lee. Depression of Lincoln. Loss of confidence in 
him. Lee defeated Hooker, Burnside's successor in 
command of the Army of the Potomac. Lee invaded 
Pennsylvania. Meade succeeded Hooker. Defeated 
Lee at Gettysburg. Grant took Vicksburg. Eng- 
land's attitude to the Civil War. Sympathy with the 
North until Battle of Bull Run. WiJliam H. Russell's 
letters to the Times swayed opinion in favor of the 
North. Battle of Bull Run. Influence of the cotton 
famine. Russell compelled to leave America. Seiz- 
ure of Mason and Slidell. Jubilation at the North. 
Sensation in England. Demand for the surrender of 
Mason and Slidell. Demand complied with. Neglect 
of England to detain war steamers Florida and Ala- 
bama. General belief in England that the North 
could not conquer the South. Movement toward in- 
terference. Gladstone's Newcastle speech, October 7, 
1862. Decision that the existing policy of non-inter- 
vention should be continued. Sympathy of the com- 
mon people with Lincoln's policy of emancipation. 
Earl Russell's friendly neutrality in 1863. The case 
of the iron clad rams at Birkenhead. Earl Russell 
detained the rams. Grant a great general. Lincoln's 
power. Grant in command of the Army of the Poto- 
mac. In his first campaign failed to crush Lee's army, 
but his own was shattered. Gloom and dejection at 
the North succeeded by joy at Farragut's and Sher- 
man's victories. Lincoln reelected President. Grant 
forced Lee's surrender at Appomattox. Assassination 
of Lincoln. Lee the representative of the Southern 
cause. Lincoln necessary for the victory of the North. 



LECTURES ON THE AMERICAN 
CIVIL WAR 

LECTURE I 

ANTECEDENTS OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 
1850-1860 

Gaediner's title " History of Our Great 
Civil War" has always struck me as apt. 
A historian so careful in his use of adjectives 
could not have adopted one so expressive 
without reflection. The English Civil War 
was great in itself and its consequences, 
and, though it may not convey as important 
lessons to the whole civilized world as did 
that one of which Thucydides was the his- 
torian, yet for its influence on American 
colonial life and on the development of our 
history to the formation of our Constitution, 
it is for us a more pregnant study. More- 
over Gardiner's history of it is a model for 
the historian of our Civil War. 



2 CAUSE OF THE WAR, SLAVERY 

There is risk in referring any historic 
event to a single cause. Lecky entitled his 
celebrated chapter, " Causes of the French 
Revolution." Social and political, as well 
as religious, reasons, according to Gardiner, 
brought on the Great Civil War.^ Thu- 
cydides, on the other hand, though he did 
indeed set forth the "grounds of quarrel," 
stated his own belief that " the real though 
unavowed cause" of the war was "the 
growth of the Athenian power." And of the 
American Civil War it may safely be asserted 
that there was a single cause, slavery. In 
1862 John Stuart Mill in Fraser's Magazine^ 
and Professor Cairnes in a pamphlet on 
the Slave Power, presented this view to 
the English public with force, but it is al- 
ways difficult to get to the bottom of a 
foreign dispute, and it is not surprising that 
many failed to comprehend the real nature 

* Gardiner's Great Civil War, I, 11. 

2 Dr. O. W. Holmes wi'ote to J. L. Motley, from Boston,, March 
8, 1862 : " John Stuart Mill's article in Fraser has delighted people 
here more than anything for a good while. I suppose his readers 
to be the best class of Englishmen." Motley's Letters, II, 69. 



THE TARIFF DISPUTE OF 1832 3 

of the conflict. When in July, 1862, William 
E. Forster said in the House of Commons 
that he believed it was generally acknowl- 
edged that slavery was the cause of the war, 
he was answered with cries, *'No, no! " and 
" The tariff! " ^ Because the South was for 
free trade and the North for a protective 
tariff this was a natural retort, though pro- 
ceeding from a misconception, as a reference 
to the most acute tariff crisis m our history 
will show. 

In 1832, South Carolina, by act of her 
Convention legally called, declared that 
the tariff acts passed by Congress in 1828 
and 1832 were "null, void, no law," and 
that no duties enjoined by those acts 
should be paid or permitted to be paid in 
the State of South Carolina. It is a signifi- 
cant fact that she failed to induce any of 
her sister Southern States to act with her. 
By the firmness of President Jackson and 
a conciliatory disposition on the part of the 
high tariff party the act of nullification was 

1 IV, 80. 



4 THE FREE SILVER DISPUTE OF 1896 

never put in force ; ^ but the whole course 
of the incident and the yielding of South 
Carolina demonstrated that the American 
Union could not be broken up by a tariff 
dispute. Natural causes since 1832 have 
modified the geographical character of the 
controversy. The production of sugar in 
Louisiana, the mining of coal and the man- 
ufacture of iron in a number of Southern 
States have caused their senators and repre- 
sentatives to listen kindly to pleas for a 
protective tariff. 

Here is a further illustration of the 
unique character of the divisional or, as we 
should say, sectional dispute concerning sla- 
very. Sixteen years ago, the money ques- 
tion, the demand for the free coinage of 
silver, took on a sectional character in ar- 
raying the West and the South against the 
East, but the advocates of the gold standard 
always had a hearing and a party in the 
States devoted to silver. But after 1850, 
there was no antislavery party in the South 

1 1, 45. 



PRINCIPLE OF NATIONALITY 5 

and men advocating even the gradual aboli- 
tion of slavery would not have been suffered 
to speak. Again, in 1896, natural causes 
had play ; they took from the dispute about 
the money standard its sectional character. 
The disappearance of the grasshoppers that 
ate the wheat and maize, the breaking of the 
severe drought of the preceding years, the 
extension further west of the rain belt, good 
crops of cotton, maize and wheat with a good 
demand, brought prosperity to the farmers 
and with it a belief that the gold standard 
best served their interests. 

Some of our younger writers, impressed 
with the principle of nationality that pre- 
vailed in Europe during the last half of the 
nineteenth century, have read into our con- 
flict European conditions and asserted that 
the South stood for disunion in her doctrine 
of States' rights and that the war came be- 
cause the North took up the gage of battle 
to make of the United States a nation. I 
shall have occasion to show the potency of 
the Union sentiment as an aid to the de- 



6 SLAVERY A GRAVE PROBLEM 

struction of slavery, but when events are 
reduced to their last elements, it plainly 
appears that the doctrine of States' rights 
and secession was invoked by the South to 
save slavery, and by a natural antagonism, 
the North upheld the Union because the 
fight for its preservation was the first step 
toward the abolition of negro servitude. 
The question may be isolated by the incon- 
trovertible statement that if the negro had 
never been brought to America, our Civil 
War could not have occurred. 

The problem was a tougher one than had 
confronted Eome even if we regard as justi- 
fied Mommsen's dire arraignment of slavery 
in his brilliant chapter. '' Eiches and mis- 
ery," he wrote, *4n close league drove 
the Italians out of Italy and filled the 
Peninsula partly with swarms of slaves, 
partly with awful silence." ^ In the South, 
the slaves belonged to an inferior race ; the 
gulf is deep between the white race and the 
black. I wish, said James Madison, that 

1 1, 382. 



ANTECEDENTS OF THE CIVIL WAR 7 

I might work a miracle. I would make all 
the blacks white. I could then in a day 
abolish slavery.^ Just before the war, a 
lunatic in an asylum near Boston, who took 
great interest in the different proposed com- 
promises and solutions of the insoluble con- 
troversy, finally announced, I have found 
it! I know what will prevent the war. 
Countless pails of whitewash, innumerable 
brushes ; make the negroes white ! 

I purpose devoting my first lecture to the 
antecedents of our Civil War and I shall be- 
gin the account with a statement of condi- 
tions in 1850. The issue of the war with 
Mexico gave the United States a large 
amount of new territory, known then as 
California and New Mexico, which under 
the Mexican law were free from slavery and 
ought to remain so unless this condition 
were removed by express enactment. But 
Calhoun, Senator from South Carolina, with 
ascendant influence over the Southern mind, 
had a theory to fit the occasion. lie said 

1 1, 383. 



8 CALIFORNIA DECIDED AGAINST SLAVERY 

that wlien the sovereignty of Mexico was 
succeeded by that of the United States, the 
American Constitution apphed to the new 
territory, and as it recognized slavery, so it 
permitted slave owners to take their slaves 
into California and New Mexico ; in other 
words it legalized slavery.^ This new 
doctrine was eagerly embraced by the 
South. But the North, believing that sla- 
very was wrong, demanded that the general 
government prohibit it in the new territory, 
and although the letter of the Constitution 
was silent on this subject, legislative prece- 
dent amply supported this demand as 
strictly constitutional. California for her- 
self resolved the question. The discovery 
of gold promoted the settlement of this 
territory by a mass of seekers of fortune, 
many of them outcasts and vagrants, while 
others, though rough, hardy men, loving 
cards and drink, had a native sense of jus- 
tice which demanded fair play. The speedy 
settlement of this hitherto unknown country 

1 1, 94. 



CALIFORNIA'S FREE CONSTITUTION 9 

led De Quincey to say, " She is going ahead 
at a rate that beats Sindbad and Gulhver";^ 
and Bret Harte has feehngly portrayed the 
early settlers and their surroundings in 
" Tales of the Argonauts," " Luck of Roar- 
ing Camp " and " Outcasts of Poker Flat." 
The quasi-military government and the sur- 
vival of the Mexican municipal authority 
did not prevent California from reaching the 
verge of anarchy and a majority were ear- 
nest that Congress should institute a stable 
territorial government, which it still failed to 
do because of the difference about slavery. 
Eventually the better class of immigrants, 
who were constantly increasing, took the 
lead in forming a State government. A 
Convention regularly chosen adopted a 
Constitution modelled after the constitutions 
of New York and Iowa and no objection 
whatever was made to the clause in the bill 
of rights, which forever prohibited slavery in 
the State. This Avas done from no moral 
motive, as men from the South, believing 

1 1, 113. 



10 CALIFORNIA DESIRED STATEHOOD 

that slavery was right, joined with North- 
erners, who beheved it wrong, in this pro- 
hibition, because they thought it would be 
out of place in the new country. As an old 
mountaineer argued in a harangue to the 
crowd, "In a country where every white 
man made a slave of himself there was no 
use in keeping niggers." ^ Armed with her 
excellent Constitution, California then pro- 
ceeded in a regular manner to make a 
natural and just demand. In the parlance 
of the day, she knocked at the doors of 
Congress for admission into the Union, but 
failed to receive a general welcome for the 
sole reason that she had prohibited slavery. 
As slavery was out of tune with the 
nineteenth century, the States that held 
fast to it played a losing game. This 
was evident from the greater increase of 
population at the North. When Washing- 
ton became President (1789), the population 
of the two sections was nearly equal, but 
thirty-one years later, in a total of less 

1 1, 115. 



NORTH GAINED ON SOUTH 11 

than ten millions there was a difference of 
667,000 in favor of the North, and when, 
twelve years later still, the immigration 
from Europe began, the preponderance of 
the North continued to increase. The 
South repelled immigrants for the reason 
that freemen would not work with slaves. 
In the House of Eepresentatives, chosen 
on the basis of numerical population, the 
North, at each decennial census and appor- 
tionment, gained largely on the South, 
whose stronghold was the Senate. Each 
State, irrespective of population, had two 
senators, and since the formation of the 
Constitution, States had been admitted in 
pairs by a tacit agreement, each free State 
being counterbalanced by a slave State. 
The admission of California which would 
disturb this equilibrium was resisted by the 
South with a spirit of determination made 
bitter by disappointment over California's 
spontaneous act. The Mexican War had 
been for the most part a Southern war; 
the South, as Lowell made Hosea Biglow 



12 DISAPPOINTMENT OF THE SOUTH 

say, was " after bigger pens to cram with 
slaves," ^ and now she saw this magnificent 
domain of California escaping her clutches. 
She had other grievances which, from the 
point of view of a man of 1850 reverencing 
the letter of the Constitution, were un- 
doubtedly well founded, but the whole dis- 
pute really hinged on the belief of the 
South that slavery was right and the belief 
of the majority of Northerners that it was 
wrong. 

At the time of the formation of the Con- 
stitution the two sections were not greatly 
at variance. A large number of Southern 
men, among them their ablest and best 
leaders, thought slavery was a moral and 
pohtical evil to be got rid of gradually. In 
due time, the foreign slave trade was pro- 
hibited, but the Yankee invention of the 
cotton-gin ^ made slavery apparently profit- 
able in the culture of cotton on the virgin 
soil of the new States in the South ; and 
Southern opinion changed. From being 

1 1, 87. 2 1^ 25. 



GARRISON AND WEBSTER 13 

regarded as an evil, slavery began to be 
looked upon as the only possible condition 
of the existence of the two races side by 
side and by 1850 the feeling had grown 
to be that slavery was ^' no evil, no scourge, 
but a great religious, social and moral 
blessing."^ As modern society required 
hewers of wood and drawers of water, the 
slave system of the South, so the argument 
ran, was superior to the industrial system of 
England, France and the North. 

In 1831, William Lloyd Garrison began 
his crusade against slavery. In a weekly 
journal, the Liberator , published in Boston, 
he preached with fearless emphasis that 
slavery was wrong and, though his imme- 
diate followers were never many, he set 
people to thinking about the question,^ so 
that six years later Daniel Webster, one of 
our greatest statesmen with a remarkable 
power of expression, said, the subject of 
slavery *' has not only attracted attention 

1 Webster's Seventh of March Speech, Works, V, 338. 
3 I, 53. 



14 SLAVERY AT THE SOUTH 

as a question of politics, but it has struck 
a far deeper-toned chord. It has arrested 
the rehgious feehng of the country ; it has 
taken strong hold on the consciences of 
men." ^ In the nineteen years before 1850 
the opinion constantly gained ground at 
the North that slavery was an evil and 
that its existence at the South was a blot 
on the national honor. 

In 1850, there were at the South 347,000 
slaveholders out of a white population of six 
millions, but the head and centre of the 
oligarchy was to be found amongst the 
large planters, possessors of fifty or more 
slaves, whose elegance, luxury and hos- 
pitality are recited in tales of travellers, 
over whose estates and lives the light of 
romance and poetry has been profusely 
shed; of these, there were less than eight 
thousand.^ Around them clustered the fash- 
ionable circles of the cities, composed of 
merchants, doctors and lawyers, a society 
seen to the best advantage in New Or- 

1 1, 72. » I, 346. 



SLAVERY AT THE SOUTH 15 

leans, Charleston and Richmond. The 
men composing this oligarchy were high- 
spirited gentlemen, with a keen sense of 
honor showing itself in hatred of political 
corruption, resentment of personal attack 
by speech or by pen, to the length of the 
fatal duel and a reverence for and readiness 
to protect female virtue. Most of them 
were well educated and had a taste for 
reading ; but they avoided American litera- 
ture as emanating mostly from New Eng- 
land, the hotbed of abolitionism, and pre- 
ferred the earlier English literature to that 
of the nineteenth century. But their ability 
manifested itself not at all in letters or in 
art, but ran entirely to law and politics, in 
which they were really eminent. English 
travellers before the Civil War liked the 
Southerners for their aristocratic bearing 
and enjoyed their conversation, which was 
not redolent of trade and the dollar, like 
much that they heard at the North.^ It is 
obvious that men of this stamp could not 

1 1, 347, 359, 361 ; VII, 172. 



16 COMPROMISE OF 1850 

be otherwise than irritated when Northern 
speeches, books and newspapers were full 
of the charge that they were living in the 
daily practice of evil, that negro chattel 
slavery w^as cruel, unjust and barbaric. 
This irritation expressed itself in recrimina- 
tion and insolent demands at the same time 
that it helped to bring them to the belief 
that property in negroes was as right and 
sacred as the ownership of horses and 
mules. 

In 1850, the South repeatedly asserted 
that she must have her rights or she would 
secede from the Union; and her action 
eleven years later proved that this was not 
an idle threat. She would submit to the 
admission of California provided she re- 
ceived certain guarantees. There resulted 
the Compromise of 1850, proposed by Henry 
Clay and supported by Daniel Webster and 
finally enacted by Congress. ^ Under it 
California came in free. Slavery was not 
prohibited in New Mexico. Webster argued 

ij, 122 etseq. 



FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 17 

that such prohibition was unnecessary as 
the territory was not adapted to slavery. 
" I would not," he said, " take pains use- 
lessly to reaffirm an ordinance of nature, 
nor to reenact the will of God."^ The 
South obtained a more stringent Fugitive 
Slave Law. Most of the negroes yearned 
for freedom, and, while their notions of 
geography were vague, they knew that 
freedom lay in the direction of the north 
star, and with that guidance a thousand 
escaped yearly into the free States. The 
rendition of fugitive slaves was a right 
under the Constitution, and as the South 
maintained that the law of 1793 was in- 
adequate, she demanded one more stringent. 
In the end, a bill based on the draft of 
James Mason (the Mason of Mason-Slidell 
fame) was enacted. It ran counter to the 
Roman maxim that, if a question arose 
about the ci\dl status of a person, he was 
presumed to be free until proved to be a 
slave, thus laying the burden of proof on 

1 1, 147. 



18 FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 

the master and giving the benefit of the 
doubt to the weaker party. Under this 
Act of ours the negro had no chance : the 
meshes of the law were artfully contrived 
to aid the master and entrap the alleged 
slave. By an extraordinary provision, the 
commissioner who determined the matter 
received a fee of ten dollars if he adjudged 
the negro to slavery and one half of that 
amount if he held the fugitive to be a 
freeman.^ The real purpose of the law 
was not so much to recover the runaway 
negroes as it was to irritate the North (or, 
in the current figure of speech, to crack the 
whip over the heads of Northern men) by 
its rigorous enforcement. To this end being 
admirably designed, it became one of the 
minor influences that brought the North 
to her final resolute stand against the ex- 
tension of slavery. 

Mason was the sort of man to think that 
he had done a clever thing when, in draw- 
ing an act to enforce the constitutional 

II, 185. 



UNCLE TOM'S CABIN 19 

right of the South, he made its enforcement 
needlessly irritating to the North. But it 
proved a menace and a plague to the sec- 
tion it was intended to benefit. For the 
Fugitive Slave Law inspired Harriet 
Beecher Stowe to write Uncle Tom's 
Cabin, the greatest of American novels 
which, in the interest that it aroused and 
the influence that it exerted, has not unfitly 
been compared to La nouvelle Heloise. 
Though the author possessed none of Kous- 
seau's force and grace of style, her novel, 
and the play founded on it, could not have 
secured the attention of England and France 
unless its human element had been power- 
fully presented. Macaulay wrote that " on 
the whole, it is the most valuable addition 
that America has made to English litera- 
ture."^ England and her colonies bought 
a million and a half copies. Two London 
theatres produced the play. Three daily 
newspapers in Paris published it as a serial 
and the Parisians filled two theatres nightly 

1 Trevelyan, II, 271. 



20 UNCLE TOM'S CABIN 

to laugh at Topsy and weep at the hard 
fate of Uncle Tom.^ Many other stories 
were written to exhibit the wrongs of the 
negro under chattel slavery, but they are 
all forgotten. Slavery, in the destruction 
of which Uncle Tom's Cabin had a po- 
tent influence, is gone, but the novel, 
published in 1852, is still read and the 
drama acted, telling the present generation 
of the great political and social revolution 
wrought in their father's time. 

From 1852 to 1860, the year in which 
Lincoln was elected President, the influence 
of this story on Northern thought was im- 
mense. The author had made no eflbrt to 
suppress the good side of slavery, but had 
shown an intelligent sympathy for the well- 
meaning masters, who had been reared un- 
der the system ; at the same time she had 
laid bare the injustice, cruelty and horror 
of the white man's ownership of the negro 
with a fidelity to nature that aflected every 
reader. The election of Lincoln is a great 

1 1, 284 et ante. 



COMPROMISE OF 1850 21 

fact in the destruction of slavery and, in 
gaining voters for him, Uncle Tom's Cabin 
was one of the effective influences. It made 
a strong appeal to women, and the mothers' 
opinion was a potent educator during these 
eight years ; boys who had read Uncle Tom's 
Cabm in their early teens reached the voting 
age at a time when they could give slavery 
a hard knock.^ 

The Compromise of 1850 was an adroit 
device, as compromises go, and, with the 
exception of the indefensible portions of the 
Fugitive Slave Law, was fair to both sec- 
tions. It abated the antislavery agitation 
at the North and the threats of disunion at 
the South and would probably have main- 
tained quiet between the two sections for a 
considerable period had not an able Demo- 
cratic senator opened the question afresh in 
1854. 

Slavery, as a sectional issue, had first 
claimed the attention of Congress in 1820 
in the form of a proposition to admit Mis- 

1 1, 285. 



22 STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS 

souri as a slave State. *' This momentous 
question," wrote Jefferson from his retire- 
ment, "Hke a fire-bell in the night awak- 
ened and filled me with terror. I considered 
it at once as the knell of the Union." ^ The 
result of the agitation was the Missouri Com- 
promise. Missouri was admitted as a slave 
State, but her Southern boundary of 36° 30' 
was henceforward taken as the line between 
slavery and freedom in the rest of the great 
territory of the Louisiana Purchase. North 
of that fine slavery was forever prohibited.^ 
In 1854, Stephen A. Douglas, a senator 
from Illinois, filled the public eye. Though 
he had never received any systematic edu- 
cation, he was a man of natural parts and 
had achieved a considerable success at the 
bar; then, finding politics more to his lik- 
ing than the law, he had been able so to 
commend himself to his community that his 
political advancement was rapid and, up to 
a point, practically continuous. He had be- 
come one of the leaders of the Democratic 

1 1, 39. 2 i^ 36. 



REPEAL OF MISSOURI COMPROMISE 23 

party and craved the presidency ; being no 
believer in the maxim that everything comes 
to him who waits, he natm-ally adopted the 
boldest methods for gratifying his restless 
ambition. As chairman of the Committee 
on Territories and leader of the Democrats 
in the Senate, he introduced a bill for the 
organization of the territories of Nebraska 
and Kansas, one clause in which provided 
for the repeal of the Missouri Compromise 
of 1820. Here was an open bid for South- 
em support in his contest for the presidency. 
His bill became a law and the slavery ques- 
tion was opened anew. For instead of 
being closed to slavery by formal Congres- 
sional act, these territories were now open 
to settlers from both North and South, the 
one bringing their horses and mules, and 
the others having the privilege of bringing 
their slaves as well.^ 

The North was indignant at this violation 
of a solemn compact by a movement initiated 
by one of her own sons. As I look back 

1 1, 425. 



24 STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS 

upon this episode, with every disposition to 
be fair to Douglas and not unmindful of 
apologies for his conduct that conscientious 
historical students have made, I believe 
that he merits strong condemnation from 
history. By his act was revived a perilous 
dispute that was thought to have been 
settled. Douglas loved his country and 
reverenced the Constitution, but he could 
not see the e\dl of slavery; he did not 
appreciate that it was out of tune with his 
century. Not intending, at first, to go the 
full length of repealing the Missouri Com- 
promise, he found that, upon opening the 
question, he had invoked a sentiment at the 
South that demanded full measure.^ To 
retreat would be cowardly, even ridiculous. 
He must go forward or give up his position 
as a leader. Therefore he demanded, in the 
end without evasion, the repeal of the 
Missouri Compromise and supported his 
measure by adroit but specious reasoning. 

* Chad wick (Hart's American Nation, Causes of the Civil 
War, 58) thinks that Douglas yielded to an unconscious pressure. 



STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS 25 

He stood for the doctrine which went by 
the high-sounding name of popular sover- 
eignty and meant that the people of the 
territories themselves should determine 
whether slavery should be protected or pro- 
hibited within their borders, and he accord- 
ingly carried the notion of local government 
to an unworkable and dangerous extreme, 
considering that the question involved was 
slavery. Give the people a chance to 
decide, he argued continually. ** If they 
wish slavery, they have a right to it." " I 
care not whether slavery is voted down or 
voted up." ^ 

Of parliamentarians, in the English sense 
of the word, Douglas is one of the cleverest 
in our annals. The conduct of his measure 
through the Senate, where he was opposed 
by men of remarkable ability and where the 
closure does not obtain, was a master stroke 
of parliamentary management. With the 
help of the President and the zeal of Soutli- 

1 I. 447 ; II. 285. So far as I know, this last statement was 
not made until 1857, but it fits his argument of 1854. 



26 REPEAL OF MISSOURI COMPROMISE 

ern representatives, who were quick to see 
their advantage, the House adopted Doug- 
las's measure despite the rise of indignant 
sentiment in the North at the betrayal of a 
sacred pledge. This outburst of public 
opinion was predicted on the day that the 
Senate passed the bill. On that sombre 
March morning of 1854, when the cannon 
from the navy-yard was booming out the 
legislative victory, Senator Chase, an earn- 
est opponent of the bill, said to his intimate 
and sympathizing friend. Senator Sumner, 
as they walked away from the Capitol to- 
gether, " They celebrate a present victory 
but the echoes they awake will never rest 
until slavery itself shall die." ^ 

Chase was right. The antislavery men, 
a powerful majority of the North, deemed 
the bill an outrage. From the press and 
the public platform, from the " stump," as 
we say, in grove or park, came emphatic 
condemnation of the conduct of Douglas 
and of the act of Congress. Douglas's un- 

1 1, 476. 



REPEAL OF MISSOURI COMPROMISE 27 

popularity in the North was intense and 
widespread. It was then a common prac- 
tice to burn in effigy the pubhc man whose 
course was disapproved. " I could travel," 
said Douglas, " from Boston to Chicago 
by the light of my own effigies." ^ Arriv- 
ing in Chicago, his home, he gave notice 
that he would address his constituents, 
but his opponents went to the meeting 
and, by cries of execration, denied him a 
hearing. 

Like Mason's Fugitive Slave Bill Doug- 
las's repeal of the Missouri Compromise re- 
acted to the detriment of its author. It 
destroyed his chance for the presidency. It 
brought about the formation of the Repub- 
lican party. On the 1st of January, 1854, 
the two chief parties in the country were 
the Democratic and Whig, the Democratic 
having the presidency and a good majority 
in both the Senate and the House. There 
was a third party, the Free-Soil, which, 
holding as its cardinal doctrine, opposition 

11,496. 



28 ANTI-SLAVERY SENTIMENT 

to slavery, sometimes held the balance of 
power in closely contested Northern States, 
but which had only a small representation 
in Congress. The repeal of the Missouri 
Compromise roused the dormant antislavery 
feeling in the country and brought home to 
many the conviction that a new party should 
be formed to unite Whigs, antislavery Dem- 
ocrats and Free-Soilers in their resistance 
to the aggression of the slave power. Sew- 
ard's ability and pohtical experience seemed 
to mark him out for leadership, but he was 
a devoted Whig and, as the Northern Whigs 
had, to a man, opposed the repeal of the 
Missouri Compromise and would form the 
predominant element in the new partner- 
ship, he thought that all antislavery men 
should enlist under their banner. Western- 
ers thought differently and, being less tram- 
melled by political organizations than their 
Eastern cousins, proceeded to inaugurate 
the movement that was really demanded 
by the posture of affairs. Five weeks after 
the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, a 



REPUBLICAN PARTY FORMED 29 

large body of earnest, intelligent and rep- 
utable men, the leading citizens of the 
State of Michigan, came together at Jack- 
son and, as the largest hall was inadequate 
for their accommodation, they met in a grove 
of famous oaks in the outskirts of the vil- 
lage. Here they resolved to suspend all 
differences regarding economic or adminis- 
trative policy, to act cordially and faithfully 
in unison with all opposed to the extension 
of slavery and to be known as Kepublicans 
until the end of the contest/ Other States 
followed this example. 

The year 1854 was one of political and 
moral excitement. Though undoubtedly 
the original impulse came from the repeal 
of the Missouri Compromise, all the ensuing 
agitation did not turn on the question of 
slavery. The temperance question entered 
into politics ; more conspicuous than this 
was the so-called Know-nothing movement, 
the object of which was a political proscrip- 
tion of foreigners, especially Roman Catho- 



30 ELECTIONS OF 1854 

lics.^ Important as were their acts for 
a twelvemonth or so, the Know-nothings 
need not divert us from the main issue 
which, as we study it in the elections of 
members for the House of Eepresentatives 
in the autumn of 1854, was the repeal of 
the Missouri Compromise — Should it be 
upheld or denounced ? In this contest the 
Northern press had a marked influence and, 
in its warm advocacy of the cause of free- 
dom, wrote for itself a noble chapter. The 
foremost journahst of the day was Horace 
Greeley, who exerted his peculiar influence 
through the New York Weekly Tribune, 
which was estimated to have half a million 
readers, many of whom looked upon it as a 
kind of political bible. The revolution in 
public sentiment was strikingly disclosed in 
the elections of 1854. In the House, which 
had repealed the Missouri Compromise, the 
Democrats had been in a majority of 84 ; 
in the succeeding one, they were in a minor- 
ity of 75. Of forty-two Northern Demo- 

in, 50. 



FIGHT FOR KANSAS 31 

crats who had voted for the Repeal only 
seven were reelected.^ While the North 
deemed the Repeal an outrage, the South 
hailed it with joy.^ Believing that slavery 
was right and that negroes were property, 
she thought that an equal privilege in the 
territory now in question was her due. 
Douglas in his bill separated the vast terri- 
tory into two parts, the northern part 
Nebraska, the southern Kansas. The 
South regarded this provision as indicating 
an intention to give her a new slave State 
in Kansas while Nebraska was entitled to 
freedom. But under the Douglas scheme 
of popular sovereignty the people of the 
territory should themselves decide whether 
or not they would have slavery. The 
actual result was a contest between the 
South and the North on the plains of Kan- 
sas.^ The adjoining slave State, Missouri, 
sent thither a number of settlers who, for 
the most part, wished merely to better their 
condition ; and, at the same time, in 

in, 67. «I, 496. 8U, 78ef seq. 



32 CIVIL WAR IN KANSAS 

response to the pioneering spirit of the age, 
a large emigration from the Western free 
States took place. Behind these natural 
movements were an organized effort in 
Missouri to make Kansas a slave State and 
an Emigrant Aid Company in New Eng- 
land, whose purpose was to make her free. 
At the first election for a territorial legisla- 
ture, a mob of five thousand Missourians, 
armed to the teeth, marched into Kansas, 
took possession of the ballot-boxes and 
chose the proslavery candidates, who, on 
their meeting, legalized slavery, and, to 
maintain it, adopted a code of laws of 
exceptional harshness and severity. Mean- 
while New England emigrants reenforced the 
original Northern settlers until there was a 
respectable free-state party wisely led. 
These repudiated the territorial legislature 
as illegal, organized at once a state govern- 
ment and applied to Congress for admission 
into the Union, so that there existed in Kan- 
sas at the same time two governments and 
two sets of people directly hostile to each 



CAUSE OF THE SOUTH 33 

other. The President and the Senate sup- 
ported the proslavery party, while the 
majority of the House, elected during the 
indignant protest against Douglas's Repeal 
of the Missouri Compromise, were on the 
side of the free-state settlers. 

The cause of Kansas was declared to be 
the cause of the South and appeals were 
made for emigrants and for slaves. One of 
the Missouri leaders said, " If we can get two 
thousand slaves actually lodged in Kansas, 
our success is certain." But all the negroes 
were wanted in the cotton States for the 
production of cotton. Moreover, there was 
a lack of means in the South properly to 
equip and arm the young hardy men who 
were desired for the conflict. The most 
significant result of the appeals by the press 
and political leaders was the arming and 
equipment of two hundred eighty men raised 
in three of the cotton States, known from 
its leader as Buford's battahon, who after a 
blessing from the Methodist pastor and a 
promise of bibles from the Baptist, left Mont- 



34 CAUSE OF THE NORTH 

gomery for Kansas to fight for the cause of 
slavery. At about the same time a meet- 
ing was held in a New Haven church to col- 
lect money for a company of seventy-nine 
emigrants who should go to Kansas to battle 
for freedom. A number of ministers and 
several of the Yale College faculty were 
present. Fifty Sharpe's rifles were wanted. 
Professor Silliman subscribed for one, the 
pastor of the church for a second, and, as 
the subscription went on, Henry Ward 
Beecher, a celebrated pulpit orator, said that 
if twenty-five were promised, his Plymouth 
Church would give the rest.^ Henceforward 
the favorite arms of the Northern emigrants, 
Sharpe's rifles, were known as " Beecher's 
bibles." The men who bore them were 
called in the cotton States ''Hireling emi- 
grants, poured in to extinguish this new 
hope of the South " ; at the North the Mis- 
souri invaders were called ^' border ruflians," 
whilst their allies, Buford's battalion, were 
scarcely in better odor. When feelings ran 

1 II, 153. 



CIVIL WAR IN KANSAS 35 

SO high m the peaceful portions of the coun- 
try, it is httle wonder that Kansas itself was 
soon in a state of civil war. At first the so- 
called " border rufiians " were the offenders, 
but when a free-state company under the 
leadership of John Brown had in one night 
on the Pottawatomie deliberately and 
cruelly murdered five proslavery men, it 
could no longer be said that the work of 
violence was all on one side. Guerilla 
bands of both parties wandered over the 
territory and engaged one another at sight. 
No frugal settler of either party was safe 
from pillage at the hands of marauders from 
the other camp. Women and children fled 
the territory. Men slept on their arms. 
Highway robbery and rapine prevailed over 
all the country-side ; " the smoke of burn- 
ing dwellings darkened the atmosphere."^ 
As the proslavery faction had the Federal 
government on its side, it claimed to be the 
party of law and order and in that name 
were committed its depredations, whilst the 

1 II, 216. 



36 ASSAULT ON SUMNER 

other faction killed and robbed in the name 
of liberty. Yet, in a balancing of acts and 
character, the free-state adherents of 1856 
are superior to the proslavery partisans in 
everything that goes to make up industrious 
and law-abiding citizens. The free-state 
men lost the larger amount of property and 
the destruction caused by the proslavery 
faction was much the greater. 

Kansas was engrossing the attention of 
Congress when there took place in the Sen- 
ate an incident that profoundly affected 
Northern sentiment. Charles Sumner, Sen- 
ator from Massachusetts, had spoken on 
" The Crime against Kansas," making use 
of much exaggeration and turgid rhetoric in 
his invective against the operations of the 
slave power. It was not this portion of his 
speech, however, that was responsible for 
its unfortunate sequel, but a bitter personal 
attack, with insulting allusions, on Butler, 
a Southern aristocrat and Senator from 
South Carolina. Two days later, after the 
adjournment of the Senate, while Sumner 



ASSAULT ON SUMNER 37 

was sitting at his desk writing letters, he 
was approached by Preston Brooks, a repre- 
sentative from South CaroHna, who declared 
that he had libelled South Carolina and his 
relative. Senator Butler. When he had 
spoken. Brooks raised his cane and struck 
Sumner on the head with all his might, con- 
tinuing to strike until he had stunned and 
blinded his victim. The cane broke ; even 
then he rained blows with the butt on 
the defenceless head. Sumner instinctively 
wrenched the desk from its fastenings, stood 
up, and with wildly directed ejSforts at- 
tempted to defend himself. Brooks struck 
him again and again. At last Sumner, reel- 
ing, staggering backwards and sidewards, 
fell to the floor, bleeding profusely and 
covered with his blood.^ 

Sumner had an iron constitution and ex- 
cellent health, but his spinal column was 
affected so that he must spend the next 
three and a half years in search of a cure. 
He received medical treatment in Washing- 

1 n, 139, 140. The assault was on May 22, 1856. 



38 KANSAS QUESTION IN CONGRESS 

ton, Boston, London and Paris, but never 
regained his former physical vigor. By an 
almost unanimous vote of the Massachusetts 
Legislature he was reelected to the Senate 
where his empty seat was eloquent for his 
cause. Not until December, 1859, was he 
able to resume and steadily pursue his sena- 
torial career. 

The assault struck the North with horror 
and indignation, while in the slave States it 
was approved by the press and by the people. 
The assailant was spoken of as the coura- 
geous and noble Brooks ; indeed the South 
rallied to him as the champion of their cause.^ 

As the Senate was democratic and the 
House republican. Congress failed to agree 
on a bill that would dispose of the Kansas 
trouble. The contest in the legislative 
chambers was then transferred to the country 
and the opportunity for a verdict from the 
people was at hand, inasmuch as a President 
and a House of Kepresentatives was to be 
chosen in this year of 1856. The Democrats 

1 II, 143, 147. 



PRESIDENTIAL CONTEST OF 1856 39 

nominated Buchanan in preference to Doug- 
las, because Buchanan had been out of the 
country as minister to England during these 
years and was not associated with the re- 
peal of the Missouri Compromise and the 
consequent disturbance in Kansas. The 
Republican National Convention was an ex- 
ceptionally earnest and patriotic body of 
men, yet it made an unfortunate nomination 
for President in Colonel Fremont, who lacked 
both the ability and the character demanded 
of the leader of so righteous a cause. But 
the Convention registered the popular will. 
It was a boon that he failed of election, as 
he was unfit to cope with the secession of 
the Southern States, which would certainly 
have ensued. The Republican declaration 
of principles was an improvement on the 
candidate. It demanded the admission of 
Kansas as a free State and declared it to be 
both the right and duty of Congress to pro- 
hibit slavery in the territories.^ The Re- 

1 The territories were organized divisions of the country un- 
der the control of the Federal government not admitted to the 
rights of statehood. See map. 



40 DEMOCRATS SUCCESSFUL 

publicans made an enthusiastic canvass, 
condemning the repeal of the Missouri Com- 
promise and pointing to "bleeding Kansas" 
as its result. But Buchanan was elected 
President, and the Democrats regained con- 
trol of the House of Eepresentatives. As 
they still had the Senate by a majority of 
12, they were in full possession of the ex- 
ecutive and legislative branches of the gov- 
ernment.^ 

Our government is singular in its com- 
plete separation of the executive, legislative 
and judicial powers. Under any polity, as 
Mr. Bryce observed, ^ we must come to the 
people at last ; yet each branch of our gov- 
ernment emanates from the people in a dif- 
ferent manner. Districts of a population of 
93,000 (I am speaking of 1856 ; our con- 
gressional districts are now much larger^) 
elect the members of the House of Repre- 
sentatives. The voters of each State choose 
a legislature which elects two senators. 

1 II, 169 et seq. ^ American Commonwealth, II, 217. 

« Under the census of 1910, 211,877. 



DRED SCOTT OPINION 41 

The President is chosen through a method 
of indirect election, by the people of the 
United States, and he appoints the justices of 
the Supreme Court, who, however, must be 
confirmed by the Senate and who have a 
life tenure. 

For three years the national legislature 
and executive had endeavored to solve the 
slavery problem with conspicuous failure. 
Now the Supreme Court was to try its 
hand. Its Chief Justice has great power in 
directing: the consideration of the Court to 
constitutional questions which may arise in 
any case before it. The present Chief, 
Taney, had been on the Bench for twenty- 
two years and had gained a solid reputation 
for accurate knowledge of law and clearness 
of statement. Being of broadly patriotic 
temper, he made up his mind that his Court 
could settle the slavery question, and, in a 
case where it was necessary only to deter- 
mine whether a certain negro named Dred 
Scott was slave or freeman, he delivered 
a carefully prepared opinion in which he as- 



42 DRED SCOTT OPINION 

serted that " the right of property in a slave 
is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the 
Constitution " ; that Congress had no more 
power over slave property than over property 
of any other kind ; consequently the Mis- 
souri Compromise Act " is not warranted by 
the Constitution and is therefore void." 
Five judges agreed with Taney and these 
made two-thirds of the Court. This decision 
which neutralized the Eepublican doctrine 
that Congress had the power to prohibit 
slavery in the territories, was a blow to 
those Eepublican leaders who were good 
lawyers and who reverenced the Supreme 
Court. It was met in the common-sense 
way by Abraham Lincoln, who declared that 
the Republicans offered no resistance to the 
decision, but, believing it to be erroneous, 
would do their best to get the Court to 
overrule it as it had previously overruled 
other decisions.^ 

This so-called Dred Scott opinion was 
delivered two days after the inauguration of 

^U, 251 et seq. 



LECOMPTON SCHEME 43 

Buchanan, and thougli it did not dispose of 
the Kansas question, it gave a theoretical 
basis to slavery in the territories and fur- 
nished a strong support for the next move 
of the slave power. 

The effort to make Kansas an actual 
slave territory had failed, as it had now 
within its borders only 200 or 300 slaves ; 
but, as there were sixteen free to fifteen 
slave States, the proslavery party eagerly 
desired the political power of another State 
— its two senators and one or more repre- 
sentatives — to restore the equilibrium exist- 
ing before 1850. A plan to this end was 
promptly devised. Originating probably 
with Southerners of high position m Wash- 
ington, it found ready instruments in 
Kansas. A sham election resulted in a 
constitutional convention, which framed a 
Constitution establishing slavery in the most 
unequivocal terms and which, as it could 
not avoid the time-honored precedent of 
submitting the Constitution to a popular 
vote, provided for a submission of it that, 



44 DOUGLAS OPPOSED BUCHANAN 

in the words of the Democratic governor of 
the territory, was " a vile fraud, a base 
counterfeit and a wretched device" to pre- 
vent the people from deciding whether or 
not they would have slavery. For the 
Convention did not dare to provide for a 
fair election, as the proslavery advocates 
would have been outvoted three to one. 
President Buchanan, though from a North- 
ern State, had a great admiration for South- 
ern politicians whose persuasion and threats 
induced him to support this plan, which was 
known as the Lecompton scheme.^ 

The proceeding was a travesty of the doc- 
trine of popular sovereignty, and when the 
Senate met in December, 1857, Douglas 
boldly denounced it.^ His manner was 
haughty and defiant as he set himself in 
opposition to his party, the Democratic, 
which was strongly entrenched in all three 
branches of the government, and he did not 
hesitate to characterize the scheme " as a 
trick, a fraud upon the rights of the people." 

1 II, 276 et seq. » H, 283. 



BREACH IN DEMOCRATIC PARTY 45 

Despite Douglas's opposition, the Demo- 
cratic Senate voted to admit Kansas as a 
State under her proslavery constitution, but 
to this the House, in closer contact with the 
people, would not agree. The excitement 
in Washington was intense, and, during a 
heated all-night session of the House, an 
altercation between a Southern and North- 
ern representative resulted in a fisticuff, in 
which thirty men were engaged, but no 
weapons drawn. In the end, a compromise 
was agreed upon between the Senate and 
the House, the effect of which was to offer 
to Kansas a large amount of public lands if 
she would accept the Lecompton constitu- 
tion. By a vote of 11,300 to 1800 she re- 
jected the bribe and thus determined that 
slavery should not exist in Kansas. But 
the affair left an irreconcilable breach in 
the Democratic party. -^ 

We are now in the year 1858, in the 
spring of which year Douglas was the best- 
known and most popular man in the North, 

1 II, 301 et ante. 



46 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

SO effectively liad he won back public esteem 
by his resistance to the Lecompton project. 
The relations between him and the Kepubli- 
cans in Congress were cordial and the possi- 
bility that their party should nominate him 
as their candidate for the presidency two 
years hence was considered by no means 
out of the question. Seward was coquetting 
with him but had no idea of stepping aside 
in his favor if the conditions were propitious 
for Eepublican success. Douglas must stand 
this year for reelection as senator from 
Illinois and the leading Eastern Republicans, 
nearly every Republican senator and many 
representatives desired that their party 
should make no opposition to him. Gree- 
ley in his powerful journal warmly favored 
his return to the Senate ; but the Republi- 
cans in Illinois, under the lead of Abraham 
Lincoln, protested against it. 

The son of a shiftless poor white of the 
slave State of Kentucky, Lincoln was 
brought up in that State and the southern 
part of Indiana, movmg to Illinois when he 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 47 

was twenty-one. The southern Indiana of 
that day might have suggested the Eden 
of Martin Chuzzlewit. Its farms and vil- 
lages were rude and ill-kept ; fever and 
ague were unrepressed ; the most ordinary 
refinements of human existence were lacking 
even to what would be considered there to- 
day the actual necessaries of civilization. 
Lincoln said that the story of his early life 
was told in a single sentence of Gray's 
Elegy,— 

" The short and simple annals of the poor." 

His schooling was necessarily meagre, but 
he had an active mind and an extraordinary 
power of application. He was a thorough 
student of the Bible and Shakespeare and 
mastered the first six books of Euclid. 
Reading few books, he thought long and 
carefully on what he read, and his opinions 
on all subjects were generally the result of 
severe study and profound reflection. He 
studied law and at the age of twenty-eight 
began practice ; but his interest in politics 



48 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

was so deep as to brook no enduring rival. 
He loved and believed in the common 
people ; he amused them and interested 
them in himself. His early associates were 
American born, dwellers in village and 
lonely farm and the stories he told them 
were of the order that there prevails ; if 
they were amusing, he cared little if they 
were coarse as well. A frequenter of the 
tavern he used neither spirits nor tobacco ; 
his personal morals were good. He served 
one term in the Illinois legislature, another 
in the United States House of Representa- 
tives, but not belonging to the dominant 
party in his State, he failed to remain con- 
tinuously in the public service. He reached 
a high rank in his profession, being esteemed 
the strongest jury lawyer in Illinois ; but he 
was a bad advocate in an unjust cause. 
The repeal of the Missouri Compromise 
diverted his attention from law to politics, 
and a speech, in which he demolished 
Douglas's political and historical sophistry, 
made him the leader of the Republicans in 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 49 

Ms State. Lincoln was then nearly elected 
United States senator, but although deeply 
disappointed, he, with rare magnanimity 
and judgment, withdrew in favor of another 
candidate, to prevent the defeat of the cause. 
Intensely ambitious, he nevertheless loved 
truth and justice better than pohtical place 
and power. At twenty-four he had been 
dubbed *' honest Abe." At no time in his 
eventful Hfe did he do anything to cast a 
shadow of discredit on this epithet sprung 
from the rude soil of Ilhnois.^ 

At the age of forty-nine, Lincoln was 
hardly known beyond the confines of his 
0T> n State or, wherever known in the East, 
was regarded as a "backwoods lawyer"; 
yet he stood forth to contest the senatorship 
with the most formidable debater in the 
fiountry. He gave the keynote of the cam- 
paign m the most carefully prepared speech 
that he had ever made, addressed to the 
EepubHcan State Convention, which had 
unanimously nominated him as the candi- 

^ n, 313 et ante. 



50 LINCOLN'S DOCTRINE 

date of their party for senator. " ' A house 
divided against itself cannot stand,'" he said. 
" I beheve this government cannot endure 
permanently half slave and half free. . . . 
Either the opponents of slavery will arrest 
the further spread of it and place it where 
the public mind shall rest in the belief that 
it is in the course of ultimate extinction ; or 
its advocates will push it forward till it shall 
become alike lawful in all the States, eld as 
well as new, North as well as South." ^ 

When Douglas went to Chicago to open 
the campaign, his town gave him an enthu- 
siastic reception, which contrasted strikingly 
with his home-coming four years earliv^r. 
In his first speech he attacked with great 
force Lincoln's '' House-divided-against-it- 
self " doctrine, which doctrine, though soon 
to be demonstrated in hard and cruel fact, 
had in 1858 not many adherents. When 
submitted to a dozen of Lincoln's political 
friends before public pronouncement, it had 
received the approval of only one, and after 

1 n, 314. 



DOUGLAS'S PROGRESS 51 

it was uttered, there was no doubt whatever 
that, inasmuch as it was in advance of his 
party's thought, it counted against him in 
his contest with Douglas. Douglas's prog- 
ress through his State amounted to a con- 
tinuous ovation. Travelling in special 
trains — an unusual proceeding at the time 
— the trains being drawn by decorated loco- 
motives, he was met at each city by com- 
mittees of escort, and, to the thunder of 
cannon and the music of brass bands, was 
driven under triumphal arches, on which 
was emblazoned the legend, " Popular Sov- 
ereignty." The blare and flare of the cam- 
paign were entirely to his liking, but they 
were merely the theatrical accessories of a 
truly remarkable actor. 

His short and massive frame was sur- 
mounted by an enormous head, from which 
shone forth eyes of a penetrating keenness ; 
his appearance alone justified the title of 
''little giant" long since given him. A 
melodious voice and a clear incisive enunci- 
ation combined with apt and forcible ges- 



52 DOUGLAS 

tures to point the ingenious arguments that 
Mndled a genuine enthusiasm in the sons of 
IlUnois, whose admiration and love he had 
gained. 

As a boy, I saw Douglas often at the 
house of my father, who was his warm per- 
sonal and political friend. His great head 
seemed out of proportion to his short body, 
giving one the idea of a preponderance of 
the intellect. But he was not a reader and 
I do not remember ever seeing a book in 
his hand. Knowing little of Europe, he 
had absorbed the history of his own coun- 
try and used this knowledge with ready 
skill. His winning manner was decisive 
with boys and he gained a hold on young 
voters, which he retained until Lincoln came 
to appeal to their moral sense. 

Lincoln realized that the current was 
setting against him, but he felt no regret for 
his action in setting forth the positive doc- 
trine of his opening speech. Believing that 
his adroit and plausible opponent could be 
better answered from a platform shared in 



LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 53 

common, he challenged him to a series of 
joint debates. He showed a profound con- 
fidence in his cause when he pitted himself 
against the man who in senatorial debate 
had got the better of Seward and Sumner 
and more recently had discomfited the cham- 
pions of the Lecompton scheme. Lincoln 
was tall, gaunt, awkward ; his face was 
dark, yellow, wrinkled and dry, voice shrill 
and unpleasant, movements shy and odd. 
In oratorical power and personal magnetism 
he was inferior to Douglas, but when he was 
warmed to his subject, his face glowed 
with the earnestness of conviction and he 
spoke with excellent result. 

The joint debates, in different portions of 
the State, were seven ; they are the most 
celebrated in our history. Illinois, though 
by no means fully aware of the crucial char- 
acter of this contest, was nevertheless suffi- 
ciently aroused to turn out audiences of from 
five to twenty thousand at these day meet- 
ings, held in groves or on the prairie. Here 
Lincoln by his remorseless logic brought 



54 LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 

Douglas to bay. He showed that the 
slavery question was at rest when Douglas 
disturbed it by the Eepeal of the Missouri 
Compromise. Why could you not leave it 
alone? he asked with emphasis. The doc- 
trine of Popular Sovereignty was "a living 
creeping lie." Douglas, he asserted, has un- 
dertaken to "build up a system of policy 
upon the basis of caring nothing about 
the very thing that everybody does care the 
most about." The real issue, Lincoln truly 
declared, is whether slavery is right or 
wrong. 

Each partisan who went to these meet- 
ings thought that his candidate got the 
better of the other. Douglas won the sen- 
atorship and for the moment the general 
opinion of the country that he had over- 
powered his antagonist in debate ; but when 
the debates were published in book form, 
in 1860, opinion changed. Careful read- 
ing showed that in the dialectic contest 
Lincoln prevailed over Douglas ; but he 
had an immense advantage in the just cause 



FOUR LEADERS 55 

and the one to which public sentiment was 
tending.^ 

The country now had four leaders, Lin- 
coln, Douglas, Seward and Jefferson Davis. 
In October, 1858, Seward declared that 
there existed " an irrepressible conflict " be- 
tween slavery and freedom.^ During the 
ensuing session of the Senate, Davis took 
the position that Congress was bound to 
protect slavery in the territories. This was 
a startling advance on the doctrine of Cal- 
houn and the Supreme Court, who had 
simply maintained that Congress had no 
right or power to prohibit it. In truth the 
apparent necessity of fostering slavery had 
driven the Southerners to extreme ground. 
Having failed to secure Kansas or any 
other Western territory, they now made an 
effort to acquire Cuba, where the slave sys- 
tem already prevailed. Further acquisi- 
tions were hoped for in Mexico and Central 
America, where it was believed that slavery 
could be easily introduced. Moreover, as 

^11,539 et ante. 211,344,347. 



56 JOHN BROWN'S ATTACK ON SLAVERY 

there were not negroes enough to cultivate 
the cotton, sugar and rice in the existing 
slave States, a large, possibly a predominant, 
party began to advocate the revival of the 
African slave trade. Indeed, during 1859, 
a large number of negroes were smuggled 
into the Southern States.^ 

Towards the end of 1859, John Brown 
made his memorable attack on slavery. The 
method of the Repu.blicans did not suit him ; 
they respected slavery in the States where 
already established. The Abolitionists had 
" milk-and-water principles," issuing merely 
in talk. His own belief was that action was 
needed. Gathering eighteen followers, ^ve 
of whom were negroes, he succeeded, on 
the cold, dark Sunday night of October 16, 
in capturing the United States armory, ar- 
senal and rifle works at Harper's Ferry, 
Virginia, which were under civil, not mili- 
tary, guard. He expected the slaves of Vir- 
ginia and the free negroes of the North to 
flock to his standard. These he would arm 

1 n, 369 ; Chadwick, Causes of the Civil War, 18, 62. 



JOHN BROWN 57 

with pikes. Fortified against attack and 
subsisting on the enemy, he would make 
his name a terror throughout the South, so 
that property in man would become insecure 
and eventually slavery might thus be de- 
stroyed. When his friends urged the folly 
of attacking the State of Virginia, the United 
States government and the slave power with 
so small a band, he said, '' If God be for us, 
who can be against us ? " Imbued as he 
was with the lessons of the Old Testament, 
he undoubtedly imagined God would work 
for him the wonders that He had wrought 
for Joshua and Gideon. 

The attempt, of course, failed quickly. 
During the Monday fighting was carried on 
with the people of Harper's Ferry ; early 
next morning Colonel Robert E. Lee, at the 
head of a company of United States Ma- 
rines, took Brown and four of his followers 
prisoners. Ten of them had been killed.-^ 
Of the inhabitants and attacking parties five 
were killed and nine wounded. 

1 Four had escaped. 



58 BROWN HANGED 

Virginia was in an uproar. While the 
rabble would have Uked to lynch Brown, 
men of education and position could not 
but admire his courage. He had a fair 
trial, was of course found guilty and, forty- 
five days later, hanged. 

The Southerners beheved that he had 
"whetted knives of butchery for their 
mothers, sisters, daughters and babes." To 
Northern statesmen, it was clear that he 
could have achieved success only by stir- 
ring up a servile war and unchaining pas- 
sions such as had made the memory of San 
Domingo horrible. If this were the whole 
of his strange story. History could visit on 
Brown only the severest condemnation. 
But his words and behavior between arrest 
and execution, his composure on the scaf- 
fold un-der circumstances peculiarly distress- 
ing must give the ingenuous student pause. 
Though the contemporary raptures of Emer- 
son and Victor Hugo ^ now look preposter- 

1 Emerson said, " I wish we might have health enough to know 
virtue when we see it and not cry with the fools • madman ' when 



BROWN'S INFLUENCE 59 

ous, it must nevertheless be admitted that 
Brown suffered martyrdom for the anti- 
slavery cause. Nor is it possible to forget 
how Northern soldiers, as they marched to 
the front to fight for the freedom of the 
negro, were insphed by the sthring music 
and words, — 

" John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave, 
But his soul goes marching on." ^ 

Three days after the execution of Brown 
the Thirty-sixth Congress assembled. In 
the intense excitement that prevailed the 
House attempted organization in the usual 
manner by election of a Speaker, but this 

a hero passes " ; and he further spoke of Brown as " that new 
saint, than whom none purer or more brave was ever led by love 
of men into conflict and death — the new saint awaiting his 
martyrdom, and who, if he shall suffer, will make the gallows 
glorious like the cross." The citation is from a lecture delivered 
Nov. 8, 1859. Brown was hanged Dec. 2. 

Victor Hugo wrote: "In killing Brown, the Southern States 
have committed a crime which will take its place among the ca- 
lamities of history. The rupture of the Union will fatally follow 
the assassination of Brown. As to John Brown, he was an apostle 
and a hero. The gibbet has only increased his glory and made 
him a martyr." Hugo suggested this epitaph for him : " Pro 
Christo sicut Christus." II, 413, 414. 

^ II, 383, et seq.; ViUard's John Brown, 426 et seq. 



60 EXCITEMENT IN CONGRESS 

was soon found to be difficult, as no one of 
the four parties who met in the chamber 
had a majority, although the Eepublican 
was the most numerous. The contest began 
on December 5 and did not end until Feb- 
ruary 1, when a conservative Republican was 
elected. At times some of the Southern 
members became excited and made extrav- 
agant statements. They accused the Re- 
publicans of complicity in John Brown's 
raid ; they censured Seward for his " irre- 
pressible conflict " speech ; and they threat- 
ened to dissolve the Union in the event of 
the election of a Republican President. On 
one day an altercation between two Illinois 
members, on another a hot personal dispute 
between a Southerner and Northerner, end- 
ing in a challenge to personal combat,^ helped 
to keep the excitement up to fever heat. A 
few days later an anti-Lecompton Democrat 
from New York was making bitter personal 
remarks about another member when a 
pistol accidentally fell to the floor from the 

1 Grow, the Northerner, made a dignified refusal. 



CHARLESTON CONVENTION 61 

breast pocket of his coat. Some members 
thinking that he had intentionally drawn 
the weapon rushed towards him ready for a 
fight if one should ensue. A senator from 
South Carolina wrote in a private letter, *' I 
believe every man in both Houses is armed 
with a revolver — some with two — and a 
bowie knife." ^ Jefferson Davis, feeling the 
responsibility of leadership, was generally 
guarded in the expression of his views, but 
he gave the Senate to understand that the 
Union would be dissolved if Seward was 
elected President. 

We are now in the year 1860, a year for 
the election of a President. As arranged 
four years previously, the Democratic Con- 
vention met in Charleston, South Carolina, 
the hotbed of disunion. The Douglas dele- 

1 II, 424 et ante. " Mr. Grow (a prominent Republican 
representative) told the writer in 1895, that, during the period just 
before the War, every member intended as much to take his revolver 
as his hat when he went to the Capitol. For some time a New 
Englander, who had formerly been a clergyman, was the only 
exception. There was much quiet jesting in the House when it 
became known that he, too, had purchased a pistol." Frederic 
Bancroft, Life of W. H. Seward, I, 503. 



62 REPUBLICAN CONVENTION OF 1860 

gates were in a majority and adopted their 
platform, whereupon the delegates from the 
cotton States seceded from the Convention. 
As under the Democratic rule, it required 
two-thirds to nominate a President, and as 
Douglas could not secure that number, the 
Convention adjourned to meet in Baltimore 
forty-six days later. There Douglas was 
finally nominated, but as soon as this nomi- 
nation seemed inevitable, another secession 
took place and these seceding delegates, 
joined by most of those from the Charleston 
Convention, adopted the Southern platform 
and nominated a Southern Democrat. 

In the meantime the most interesting of 
our Conventions, and the first one to re- 
semble a huge mass-meeting, was held in 
Chicago. The 466 Republican delegates 
met in a wigwam, a temporary frame struc- 
ture, which, it was said, would hold ten 
thousand people, although three times that 
number of strangers, mostly from the 
Northwest, clamored for admittance. The 
conditions for serious deliberation were un- 



REPUBLICAN CONVENTION OF 1860 63 

favorable, yet the delegates acted as wisely 
as if they had assembled in a hall fit for 
conference with ample leisure and a suit- 
able environment. In their platform they 
asserted that the rights of the States should 
be maintained inviolate ; denounced the 
John Brown invasion " as among the 
gravest of crimes " ; inveighed against 
the new dogma that the Constitution of 
its own force carries slavery into the terri- 
tories; denied '' the authority of Congress, 
of a territorial legislature or of any individ- 
ual to give legal existence to slavery in 
any territory " ; and branded " the recent 
reopening of the African slave-trade as a 
burning shame to our country and age." ^ 
There were only two possible nominees for 
President, Seward and Lincoln. Seward 
had wrought in the vineyard longer, was 
considered the more radical of the two 
and partly for this reason the weaker 
candidate in four of the so-called doubtful 
States. Lincoln had attracted much atten- 

1 II, 464. 



64 ELECTION OF LINCOLN 

tion by his debates with Douglas and by 
a noble speech made in February in New 
York City. He received the nomination 
on the third ballot.^ 

Our presidential election is made by 
States, each State choosing the same 
number of electors as she has senators 
and representatives in Congress. Lincoln 
carried all of the free States except New 
Jersey, whose electoral vote was divided 
between him and Douglas; having thu^ a 
majority of the electoral votes, he was 
regularly chosen for the presidency and 
would enter into office on the following 
4th of March.2 

In the election of Lincoln the North 
had spoken. In every man's mind rose 
unbidden the question. What wbuld be the 
answer of the South'? 

1 II, 470 et ante. ^ H, 500. 



LECTURE II 

FROM LINCOLN'S ELECTION, 1860, TO HIS PROCLA- 
MATION OF EMANCIPATION, 1862 

Theough the election of Lincoln the 
majority of the Northern people declared 
that slavery was wrong and should not be 
extended. The sectional character of the 
contest is clearly manifest, inasmuch as in 
ten out of the eleven States that afterwards 
seceded and made up the Southern Confed- 
eracy Lincoln did not receive a single vote. 
As soon as the result was known, South 
Carolina led off with a prompt reply. 
Since 1850, disunion sentiment within her 
borders had been strong, but a considerable 
opposition had always existed. Now, the 
day after Lincoln's election,^ the majority sud- 
denly expanded to unanimity. The crowd 
that thronged the streets of Charleston 
felt that they had an undoubted griev- 

iNov. 6, 1860. 
F 65 



66 REVOLUTION OF 1860 

ance and that their sole remedy was seces- 
sion. The legislature immediately called a 
convention, an act that was received with 
enthusiasm. Speeches, newspaper leaders, 
sermons from the pulpit were alike in their 
absolute sincerity. The North has made an 
attack on slavery, our cherished institution 
— so ran the unanimous contention — it has 
encroached upon our rights. We can pre- 
serve our liberty and our property only by 
separation. "The tea has been thrown 
overboard, the revolution of 1860 has been 
initiated." It is a striking evidence of the 
misunderstanding between the two sections 
that, while eleven-twelfths of the Northern 
voters thought the South had lorded it over 
the North since the annexation of Texas, 
South Carolinians, almost to a man, and a 
majority in the cotton States, were equally 
convinced that they had suffered grievous 
wrongs at the hands of the North. A phi- 
losopher, living in the South but sympathiz- 
ing with the North, recalled a remark of 
Thucydides as applying to the present 



DEPRESSION IN BUSINESS 67 

situation : " The Greeks did not understand 
each other any longer, though they spoke 
the same language ; words received a differ- 
ent meaning in different parts." ^ No South 
Carolinian would have asserted that any 
overt act of oppression had yet been com- 
mitted, but all would have said that a free 
people must strike at the first motion of 
tyranny. It soon became apparent that the 
course on which the State was entering with 
such enthusiasm involved a great sacrifice. 
Business went from bad to worse, merchants 
found it difficult or even impossible to pay 
their debts and the banks of Charleston were 
forced to suspend specie payments. Planta- 
tion slaves could be sold for only half what 
they would have brought before the election 
of Lincoln. In Charleston the value of all 
kinds of property except cotton fell fifty 
per cent. Nevertheless the people showed 
no sign of faltering. There was a round of 
meetings, pole raisings, dedications of ban- 

* Francis Lieber, II, 489. Lieber quoted from memory and gave 
a free translation. See Jowett, III, 82. 



68 ENTHUSIASM IN CHARLESTON 

ners, fireworks and illuminations ; and the 
music of this nascent revolution was the 
Marseillaise. The delegates who composed 
the Convention were, for the most part, 
men of distinction, whose silver hairs were a 
check to rash and impulsive action, yet, 
after certain methodical preliminaries, they 
speedily adopted the ordinance of seces- 
sion by a unanimous vote. The proclama- 
tion that the State of South Carolina was 
an independent commonwealth renewed the 
enthusiasm which was manifested by cries 
of exultation and shouts of gladness and 
the other usual phenomena of popular re- 
joicing.^ 

In the meantime. Congress met and the 
country looked to it to resolve the difficulty. 
It has been asserted that if our government 
had been carried on by a responsible min- 
istry like that of England, some expedient 
would have been devised to prevent war; 
but, as a matter of fact, we have always 
been ready in time of emergency to borrow 

ini, 114-125, 192-206. 



CONGRESS AND THE CRISIS 69 

the adaptable political machinery of any 
government by discussion. The Senate 
Committee of thirteen, which framed the 
Compromise Measures of 1850, resembled a 
coalition ministry and now a Senate Com- 
mittee of the same number was appointed to 
consider '' the grievances between the slave- 
holding and the non-slaveholding States" 
and to suggest, if possible, a remedy, which 
committee calls to mind the " Ministry of 
all the Talents." The constitution of the 
Committee was eminently fair, each party 
and section being suitably represented. In 
ability, character and influence all the sen- 
ators stood high; three of them, Davis, 
Seward and Douglas, were leaders of public 
sentiment. There was reason to believe 
that if the Union could be saved by act of 
congress, these senators would discover the 
way. The aim of compromisers generally 
was to prevent the six cotton States from 
following South Carolina in acts of secession 
and to keep the border slave States in the 
Union. The people of the North for the 



70 COMMITTEE OF THIRTEEN 

most part had some idea of the peril in 
which the Union stood and they beheved 
that in these thirteen men lay the best hope 
of an acceptable compromise. It was in- 
deed a rare committee. No two men in pub- 
lic life stood for sentiments so diametrically 
opposed as Seward and Jefferson Davis, yet 
they were on friendly social terms and had 
at one time been intimate. The incessant 
and bitter factional strife of seven years 
could not sour the genial nature of Douglas, 
who was prepared to extend the right hand 
of fellowship to every man on the com- 
mittee with the possible exception of Davis. 
In addition to a willingness to sink any 
personal animosities, he also stood ready to 
yield somewhat of his political views in 
order to preserve the Union. 

The Committee of "all the Talents" 
went to work diligently and with the sincere 
purpose of preventing further secessions. 
The pivot on which a settlement turned 
was the Crittenden Compromise, known 
from the name of its author, a senator and 



CRITTENDEN COMPROMISE 71 

member of the Committee. Amongst its 
many provisions, the really important one, 
involving the main point at issue, concerned 
the status of the territories. It was pro- 
vided that an amendment to the Constitu- 
tion should reestablish the old line of 
the Missouri Compromise, the parallel of 
36° 30', as the boundary between slavery 
and freedom; south of this line slavery 
should be protected, north of it prohibited. 
This provision, though entirely satisfactory 
to both the Northern Democratic and the 
border State senators, was by no means 
acceptable to the cotton States, unless it 
should be expressly provided or understood 
that the protection to slavery should apply 
to any territory subsequently acquired south 
of the compromise hne.^ 

The pressure of business interests at the 
North for the preservation of the Union was 
strong. The depression in trade, the fever- 
ish and panicky condition of the New York 
stock market, the suspension of specie pay- 

1 III, 146 et seq. 



72 DEPRESSION IN TRADE 

ments by the banks of Charleston, Wash- 
ington, Baltimore and Philadelphia, the 
apprehended repudiation of debts due the 
North by Southern merchants, the payment 
by the government of interest at the rate of 
twelve per cent per annum for a small loan, 
— all these developments were bound to 
incline Republican senators toward some 
compromise which should check the seces- 
sion movement.^ Especially was this the 
case of Seward, senator from New York and 
in touch with the great city's financial in- 
terests, leader of the Republican party in 
Congress and a confirmed opportunist in 
politics. He never pronounced in favor of 
the Crittenden Compromise, nor on the 
other hand did he condemn it.^ He wa- 
vered, and if he could have secured the sup- 
port of Lincoln, would undoubtedly have 
given it his countenance. The influence of 
the two would have carried it in Committee 
and secured its adoption by Congress, pre- 

1 III, 171, 251. 

2 III, 156 et seq. ; Bancroft, Life of Seward, II, 32-34. 



LINCOLN'S ATTITUDE 73 

venting further secessions and for the mo- 
ment avoiding the war. 

It may seem curious to Enghshmen that 
in a pure democracy hke ours, so long an 
interval should elapse between the election 
and the inauguration of a President. The 
election of 18 GO was a political revolution, 
yet not until four months after Lincoln was 
chosen did he assume the reins of office. 
In the interim, he exercised a large influ- 
ence, but it was wholly indirect and in the 
form of counsel given in pnvate conver- 
sation or personal letter to senators, repre- 
sentatives and other important men. He 
well understood the needs of the situation 
and, having offered Seward the position of 
Secretary of State, the leading post in his 
Cabinet, he was able through him and 
others to dictate the policy of his party. 
On every point but one, Lincoln was willing 
to compromise ; on the question of the ex- 
tension of slavery he was inflexible. If we 
yield there, he wrote, the South has us 
under again. " All our labor is lost and 



74 CRITTENDEN COMPROMISE DEFEATED 

sooner or later must be done over. The 
tug has to come now, and better now than 
later." He saw clearly that if the line of 
latitude of 36° 30' should be drawn between 
slavery and freedom, filibustering would 
recommence and through this and other 
means, the South would seek to acquire 
Cuba, Mexico and Central America in order 
to augment the slave power and put us 
again "on the high road to a slave empire."^ 
The Eepublicans therefore defeated the 
Crittenden Compromise in committee;^ they 
then came forward with a proposition un- 
acceptable to the cotton States. On De- 
cember 28, 1860, the Committee adopted a 
resolution that they '' had not been able to 
agree upon any general plan of adjustment,"^ 
and thus gave virtual notice to the country 
that the cotton States could not be retained 
in the Union. But this inference that sepa- 
ration must follow, though obvious enough 
to the historical student of to-day, was by no 

1 m, 160, 161, 269. 

2 III, 154, 167 ; Chadwick, Causes of the Civil War, 172-181. 
8 ni, 175, 178. 



CRITTENDEN AND DOUGLAS 75 

means generally drawn at the time. Critten- 
den and Douglas, nowise despairing, tried to 
further the original plan of settlement by 
placing it on a new basis. They proposed 
the submission of the Crittenden Compro- 
mise to a popular vote, having a well- 
grounded confidence that a large majority 
of the country would favor it. Had the 
referendum been as popular then as it is 
now, they might have persuaded Congress 
to adopt this proposal, but the Kepublican 
senators, obviously fearing the result, never 
permitted it to come to a vote in the Sen- 
ate.^ The House of Representatives tried 
its hand at compromise, but failed to agree 
upon any practicable measure. On the in- 
vitation of Virginia, the largest and most 
important border slave State, a Peace Con- 
vention, made up of notables from twenty- 
one States, assembled in Washington and 
threshino; " the straw of debate anew " ^ 

1 III, 253, 262. 

2 III, 306. James Russell Lowell's comment was : " The usual 
panacea of palaver was tried; Congress did its best to add to the 
general confusion of thought; and, as if that were not enough, a 



76 CIVIL WAR INEVITABLE 

adopted a plan of adjustment, which, car- 
ried as it was by a narrow margin of votes, 
had no force at the back of it and resulted 
in nothing.^ 

The Civil War in England, wrote Gardi- 
ner, *' was rendered inevitable " because " a 
reconciliation between opposing moral and 
social forces " could not be effected.^ Here 
is an exact statement of our own case in 
1861. The Civil War might have been 
averted had the North yielded to the South 
and in the words of Lincoln ceased refer- 
ences to " slavery as in any way a wrong " 
and regarded it ''as one of the common 
matters of property " speaking " of negroes 
as we do of our horses and cattle." ^ In 
other words, the North must repress its own 
enlightened sentiment regarding slavery and 
ignore that of England, France, Germany 

convention of notables was called simultaneously to thresh the 
straw of debate anew and to convince thoughtful persons that men 
do not grow wiser as they grow older." 

1 III, 305. 

2 History of the Great Civil War, I, 1. 
8 n, 332. 



SECESSION A PEOPLE'S MOVEMENT 77 

and Italy. Or, on the other hand, the war 
might have been prevented had the South- 
erners had a change of heart, reverted to 
the sentiment of the founders of the repub- 
lic that slavery was an evil and agreed to 
limit its extension. The logical result would 
have been gradual abolition and the North 
stood ready to bear her share in compensat- 
ing the owners of slaves. But anybody who 
should have promulgated such a doctrine in 
the South in 1861 would have been laughed 
at, hooted or mobbed.^ 

Secession moved apace. The conventions 
of the six cotton States in quick succession 
passed ordinances dissolving their bonds 
with the Federal Union. The movement 
was of the people, and not dictated by a 
dozen or a hundred conspirators, sending 
forth decrees from their secret conclaves in 
Washington. Legislatures called conven- 
tions of the people. After animated can- 
vasses in Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana, 
and a full understanding of the matter in all 

1 III, 269; Chadwick, Causes of the Civil War, 56. 



78 ELECTION OF CONVENTIONS 

of the States, the question in the popular 
elections of delegates to the conventions was 
really put : Shall it be immediate seces- 
sion, or delay with the endeavor to secure 
our rights within the Union? and the 
answer was always, " Immediate secession." 
This action was justified in accordance with 
two doctrines which had been maintained 
side by side by Calhoun, the great leader of 
the South after the fathers of the Eepublic, 
— the rightfulness of slavery and the sov- 
ereignty of the States. The Southerners 
saw in the election of Lincoln a reproach 
that they were living in the daily practice 
of a heinous wrong, and rather than submit 
to the meddling of unfriendly hands with 
their sacred institution, they invoked the 
remedy of secession which they deemed 
their undoubted right, because the Consti- 
tution was a compact to which the States 
were parties in their sovereign capacity; 
and they bolstered up this policy with the 
assertion that the North had violated that 
Constitution by opposing the extension of 



DOCTRINE OF SECESSION 79 

slavery, thus denying them their rights in 
the common territories.^ 

Most Europeans are struck with the 
strangeness of the doctrine of secession ; 
that, in its organic act, the nation should in 
effect have provided for its own dissolution, 
by permitting the withdrawal of a compo- 
nent part or parts, on the ground of griev- 
ances, of whose validity the aggrieved should 
be the sole judge. Here was no claim of 
the common right of revolution. The cot- 
ton States did not maintain that revolution 
was justified, but that in the delegation of 
powers to the Federal government, the right 
of withdrawal from the Union was reserved ; 
this right they now exercised. In 1861, it 
was an open question in the United States 
whether the Constitution was indeed such a 
compact. The North, influenced by the 
teaching of Webster, denied the right of 
secession ; the South, swayed by Calhoun, 
asserted it. An impartial judge must have 
realized that there were two sides to the 

1 III, 273. 



80 SECESSION UNWISE 

dispute ; and after hearing the historical 
and traditional arguments, he might have 
found a decision difficult. But nothing is 
clearer than that the right of secession 
would never have been invoked save for 
the protection of slavery.^ 

From the point of view of political expe- 
diency secession was thoroughly miwise. 
The election of Lincoln did not carry with 
it a Republican Congress ; opposed to him 
was a majority of the Senate and the House 
of Representatives ; and every justice of the 
United States Supreme Court except one 
leaned against his policy. Under the Dred 
Scott decision of this Court, the Southerners 
possessed the right of taking their slaves 
into the territories. In this whole contro- 
versy nobody spoke more to the point than 
Charles Francis Adams when he termed the 
alleged grievances of the South " mere 
abstractions." And if the counsel of their 
wisest leaders could have prevailed, the 
Southern States would have been less pre- 

1 III, 119 et seq., 203, 280. 



JEFFERSON DAVIS 81 

cipitate. Prepare yourselves for a long and 
bloody war, was the burden of Jefferson 
Davis's speeches to his followers in the 
course of his progress from Washington to 
the capital of his State.^ Very different 
this from the boast — wliich was common 
enough — that the North was so absorbed 
in money getting that she would not fight, 
or, if she did, that one Southerner could 
" whip four Yankees." 

The ardor and confidence of the people 
soon reacted upon the leaders themselves. 
Delegates of seven cotton States assembled 
in Montgomery to form a Southern Con- 
federacy. They elected Jefierson Davis, 
the ablest statesman of the South, their 
President and adopted a permanent Consti- 
tution with few essential departures from 
the Constitution of the United States ; three 
of these departures concerned negro slavery. 
In the Confederate Constitution the right of 
property in negro slaves was expressly 
stated ; the obligation to recognize and pro- 

1 III, 297 et seq. 



82 CONFEDERATE CONSTITUTION 

tect slavery in any new territory that might 
be acquired was finally and explicitly im- 
posed on the Congress ; and, in the different 
provisions relating to the cherished institu- 
tion the words " slave " and " slavery " 
stood forth in bold veracity, contrasting 
sharply with the ingenious circumlocution 
of the Federal Constitution in which the 
use of these words had been studiously 
avoided. In deference to the opinion of 
Christendom the foreign slave-trade was 
prohibited. The preamble of the Constitu- 
tion affirmed in effect the right of secession 
and called attention to the religious character 
of the people by " invoking the favor and 
guidance of Almighty God." ^ 

By way of propitiating England and se- 
curing, if possible, her active assistance, it 
was sometimes asserted at the South that one 
cause of the secession was the protective 
tariff, which was alleged to have been forced 
upon the South by the North. And some 
color was given to this assertion by a section 

im, 291, 320. 



TARIFF AN UNIMPORTANT ISSUE 83 

of the Confederate Constitution which for- 
bade the imposition of duties on foreign im- 
ports to foster any branch of industry. It 
was difficult during the war to persuade 
many Enghshmen that the tariff was not at 
the bottom of the dispute, although in truth 
it was a very unimportant issue. When 
Lincoln was elected, the tariff of 1857 — a 
revenue tariff of something less than twenty 
per cent — was in operation and while the 
Morrill tariff bill, increasing the duties, had 
passed the House, it could not have passed 
the Senate except for the secession of the 
seven cotton States and the consequent with- 
drawal of fourteen senators. If the cotton 
States had stipulated for a continuance of 
the tariff of 1857 as a necessary condition of 
their remaining in the Union, this demand 
would have been joyfully acceded to ; and 
their approval of this tariff law is shown by 
its enactment by the Confederate Congress 
at its first session.^ 



1 ni, 58, 204, 294, 315, 322; John Sherman's Recollections, I, 
187. 



84 SLAVERY THE CORNER-STONE 

In the once proud Union there were now 
two estabhshed governments. The South- 
erners in Montgomery had proceeded in an 
orderly manner and made it evident that 
they shared with the North her pohtical 
aptitude. Both peoples were God-fearing, 
professed the same religion, spoke the same 
language, read the same literature, revered 
the same Constitution, had similar laws and 
with the one notable exception the same 
institutions. The difference was frankly 
stated by the Vice-President of the Southern 
Confederacy, Alexander H. Stephens, who 
said: The foundations of our new govern- 
ment are laid ; "its corner-stone rests upon 
the great truth that the negro is not equal 
to the white man ; that slavery is his nat- 
ural and normal condition. . . . This stone 
[the doctrine that negro slavery is right] 
which was rejected by the first builders [the 
fathers of the republic] * is become the chief 
of the corner ' — the real * corner-stone ' in 
our new edifice."^ 

1 III, 324. 



THE INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY 85 

Evident though it be that slavery was the 
cause of the secession, the ingenuous and the 
thoughtful (calling to mind that Plato 
beheved slavery necessary and Aristotle 
deemed it '' both expedient and right ") must 
withhold their censure from the slaveholders. 
No American can forget that Washington 
and Robert E. Lee, two of the noblest prod- 
ucts of our life, were owners of slaves. 
Again, if we of the North will but ask 
ourselves what would have happened if our 
Pilm-im and Puritan ancestors had settled in 
Virginia instead of in Massachusetts and we 
had ourselves inherited slaves, it is hardly 
possible to answer otherwise than that most 
of us would have fought for slavery. 

The system of slavery becomes so inter- 
woven with the political, economic and 
social life of the community that to re- 
move it is to endanger the whole fabric. 
Willingly to renounce it would be little 
short of heroic; to cling to it is become 
second nature. If "Caesar was the entire 
and perfect man," and if slavery in Rome 



86 AMERICAN SLAVEHOLDERS 

was a most arrant sin and abomination, des- 
olating " God's fair world," as Mommsen 
wrote, how difficult was this evil to grapple 
with may be realized when we find our 
historian constrained thus to apologize for 
his hero : " Csesar could not abolish slav- 
ery."^ Add, then, a difference in race and 
color between the master and the slave and 
the problem becomes harder still. 

Sympathy rather than censure is the due 
of the American slaveholders. The evil 
left its mark upon the Southern gentleman, 
but so lightly as hardly to tarnish his 
character, for he relegated the repulsive part 
of slavery to unscrupulous hirelings, the 
overseers and slave-traders. Impetuous and 
domineering, quick to anger, mainly indif- 
ferent to scientific truth, and no worshipper 
of progress, the Southern gentleman be- 
longed more to the eighteenth than the 
nineteenth century.^ It is regrettable that 
these slaveholders, and the lawyers, mer- 
chants and doctors who united with them 

1 Mommsen, IV, 546, 593, 621. ^ I, 359 ei seq. 



PEACEABLE SEPARATION OR WAR 87 

to make up the society of the South, did 
not in 1861 follow the counsel of their wiser 
leaders and seek redress in the Union/ for 
slavery was safer in it than out of it, as was 
foreshadowed at the time and as the result 
proved. But passion got the better of 
reason and again shaped the course of a 
great people. 

Now that the Southern Confederacy re- 
garded itself as established by the regular 
procedure in Montgomery, the North had 
to choose between peaceable separation and 
war. Shortly after Lincoln's election, Gree- 
ley had forcibly advocated in the New York 
Tribune the policy of letting the cotton 
States go in peace ^ and this proposal re- 
ceived at different times considerable sup- 
port in the North. If a body of water as 
wide as the English Channel had separated 
the seven cotton States from the rest of the 
Union, such would have been the solution. 



1 m, 210. 

' As General Scott expressed it " Wayward sisters depart in 
peace." Til, 341. 



88 ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND ROBERT E. LEE 

but, no considerable natural barrier existing, 
Lincoln was fully justified in saying in his 
inaugural address, " Physically speaking we 
cannot separate." On the other hand, the 
idea of preserving the Union by force was 
regarded with abhorrence by the two heroes 
of the war Abraham Lincoln and Eobert E. 
Lee. " The ugly point," said Lincoln, " is 
the necessity of keeping the government to- 
gether by force, as ours should be a govern- 
ment of fraternity." ^ '* A union," wrote 
Lee, " that can only be maintained by 
swords and bayonets, and in which strife 
and civil war are to take the place of broth- 
erly love and kindness, has no charm for 
me." 2 

The North showed its disposition to pre- 
vent disunion by carrying through Con- 
gress by the necessary two-thirds vote an 
amendment to the Constitution guarantee- 
ing slavery indefinitely in the States ; ^ in 
other words the institution would have been 
protected where it already existed. This 

1 ni, 160, 317. 2 Long, Life of Lee, 88. « HI, 313. 



LINCOLN'S INAUGURAL ADDRESS 89 

Amendment, which would have received 
the necessary ratification by the States had 
not the war ensued, was numbered the 
Thirteenth and the mistake that the South 
made is emphasized by the contrast with 
this and our actual Thirteenth Amendment, 
adopted four years later which abohshed 
slavery forever.^ 

On March 4, 1861 Lincoln was peace- 
fully inaugurated in Washington. He 
delivered an address that was moderate 
but firm and to the point, announcing that 
he had no purpose of interfering with 
slavery in the States, denying the right of 
secession and declaring that he would en- 
force the law in all the States, using his 
power to hold ''the property and places 
belonging to the government, and to collect 
the duties and imposts." This last dec- 
laration irritated the South, as she was 
determined to resist by force any such 
action on the part of the President.^ The 
only question now was when and where 

1 V, 50. a III, 316. 



90 FORT SUMTER 

the war would begin ; and it seemed almost 
certain that Fort Sumter in Charleston 
Harbor with its garrison of United States 
troops would furnish the occasion for the 
first clash. The surrender of this fort had 
been demanded by South Carolina and later 
by the Southern Confederacy. Lincoln 
seemingly confronted with the alternative 
policy of surrender or reenforcement of the 
garrison, decided on neither, but as pro- 
visions were running short, he adopted the 
plan of sending supplies. South Carolina 
was notified of this decision by the President 
himself; Montgomery, by South Carolina. 
The result was a demand for the evacua- 
tion of Fort Sumter, refusal, bombardment, 
artillery duel between Sumter and the Con- 
federate batteries lasting thirty-four hours 
and, in the end, surrender.-^^ 

April 12, 1861 is the notable day of 
the commencement of our Civil War by 
the firing of the Confederate guns upon the 
United States flag. At the time when 

1111,337, 346 cisej. 



COMMENCEMENT OF CIVIL WAR 91 

Lincoln decided on sending provisions to 
Fort Sumter, both he and Davis had un- 
doubtedly come to believe that war was 
inevitable and each was anxious to avoid 
striking the first blow because of its prob- 
able effect on public sentiment at the 
North. Davis had good reason to regret 
that matters so fell out that the South be- 
came the aggressor, while Lincoln might 
well be grateful for the blunder that gave 
him in his time of trouble a united North. 
Still praying and hoping that actual hostili- 
ties might be averted, the people of the 
North were profoundly moved when they 
realized that civil war had begun. The 
shots fired at Sumter convinced everybody 
that the time for argument and compromise, 
of discussion and entreaty had passed ; 
that the dispute was not to be settled by 
Congress or by conventions, or at the 
ballot-box and that this peace-loving people 
must suspend their industrial activities and 
prepare for the stress of war. When the 
President called for 75,000 militia to sup- 



92 UPRISING OF THE NORTH 

press combinations obstructing tbe execu- 
tion of tbe laws in seven of the Southern 
States, they gave their approval as with a 
single voice and rose almost as one man to 
his support. In this uprising of the people, 
their blood was stirred as it had not 
been stirred since the Union was formed. 
Militia regiments and military companies 
which had been organized merely for the 
purpose of exercise, for social intercourse 
or for Fourth-of-July parades, hastened 
to prepare themselves for actual fighting. 
Men who had never dreamed of a soldier's 
life were now eager to enlist. Working- 
men, mechanics, clerks, students and pro- 
fessors of the colleges, many sons of wealthy 
and influential families enrolled themselves 
at once for the common cause. Men of 
position in civil life went out as officers of 
companies and regiments, but when such 
places were lacking they shouldered mus- 
kets and served in the ranks. Individuals, 
towns, cities and States offered money 
freely. Patriotism spoke from the pulpit, 



UPRISING OF THE NORTH 93 

the platform, the stump and with the 
voice of the press. " The attack on Fort 
Sumter," wrote Emerson, '' crystallized the 
North into a unit." The feeling that the 
South had been precipitate and unreason- 
able and that she was clearly in the 
wrong was almost universal. That she had 
wickedly rebelled, had without just and 
sufficient cause begun a civil war, well ex- 
pressed the sentiment of those who, after 
listening to passionate utterances at the 
public meetings, went straightway to the 
enlisting officer and enrolled themselves as 
volunteers. The speakers declared that 
the people must preserve the Union and 
maintain the government ; and this was 
clearly the purpose in the mmds of those 
who enlisted during the first months of 
the war. ^ 

The people of the Confederate States 
were elated over the bombardment and 
evacuation of Fort Sumter. They regarded 
Lincoln's call for troops as a declaration of 

1 ni, 357. 



94 UPRISING OF THE SOUTH 

war, forcing them to arm for the defence 
of their property and their liberties. Be- 
lieving in the constitutional right of seces- 
sion, they regarded his attempt to coerce 
them back into the Union as nothing less 
than a measure for their subjugation. The 
uprising of men and the proffers of money 
matched those which were forthcoming at 
the North. The best blood offered itself 
to fight for country and cherished rights.^ 

It has been said that the American Civil 
War was remarkable in that it was waged 
on account of a difference of constitutional 
interpretation. The support for this state- 
ment is that each side obscured the real 
reason why it submitted its cause to the 
God of Battles, the South maintaining that 
they fought for the sovereign rights of 
States, the North because they resisted the 
dissolution of the Union. Whether the 
ostensible or the real reason of the war be 
considered, there is something inspiring in 
the thought that these two peoples threw 

im, 381. 



THE UNION — THE CONFEDERACY 95 

aside money-getting and sordid calculation 
and entered on a course of self-sacrifice for 
the sake of principle. 

The firing on Fort Sumter and the Presi- 
dent's call for troops decided at once the 
course of Virginia. Two days after Lin- 
coln's proclamation, her convention passed 
an ordinance of secession, and, in recogni- 
tion of the importance of her adhesion, her 
chief city, Richmond, was made the capital 
of the Southern Confederacy. Three other 
slave States quickly followed her example 
and became constituent parts of the new 
government.^ Three of the border slave 
States, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri 
were kept in the Union by good manage- 
ment, the chief measure of which was the 
executive skill and energy of Lincoln.^ 

The Union of twenty-three States and 
the Confederacy of eleven were now defi- 
nitely arrayed against each other. Twenty- 
two million people confronted nine million, 
and of the nine milhon three and a half 

1 m, 383, 385, 396. » in, 388 et seq. 



96 THE NORTH— THE SOUTH 

million were slaves. The proportion was 
nearly that of five to two. The Union had 
much greater wealth, was a country of a 
complex civilization and boasted of its 
various industries ; it combined the farm, 
the shop and the factory. The Confeder- 
acy was but a farm, dependent on Europe 
and on the North for everything but bread 
and meat, and before the war for much of 
these. The North had the money market 
and could borrow with greater ease than 
the South. It was the iron age. The 
North had done much to develop its wealth 
of iron, that potent aid of civilization, that 
necessity of war; the South had scarcely 
touched its own mineral resources. In 
nearly every Northern regiment were me- 
chanics of all kinds and men of business 
training accustomed to method in their daily 
lives, while the Southern army was made up 
of gentlemen and poor whites, splendid fight- 
ers, of rare courage and striking devotion, 
but as a whole inferior in education and in 
a knowledge of the arts and appliances of 



TASK OF THE SOUTH 97 

modern life to the men of the North. The 
Union had the advantage of the regular 
army^ and navy, of the flag and of the 
prestige and machinery of the national 
government ; the ministers from foreign 
countries were accredited to the United 
States ; the archives of what had been the 
common government were also in possession 
of the Union. 

The Southern people, in their pursuit of 
independence, were by no means dismayed 
at the spectacle of the united North and the 
odds of number and wealth against them. 
Did not the Grecians, they asked, vanquish 
Xerxes, did Philip of Spain subdue Hol- 
land ? Nevertheless, in making the effort 
to gain their independence, the Southern 
people had undertaken a stupendous task ; 
they had started out on a road, the end of 
which was at best doubtful ; they had gone 
to an extreme, before proceeding to which 
it would have been better to endure some- 

* 17,000 men when Lincoln was inaugurated. Nicolay and Hay, 
IV, 65. 



98 THE TASK OF THE NORTH 

what of grievance. They said they were 
fighting for hberty, yet they must shoulder 
the burden of their own denial of Hberty to 
three and a half million human beings. 
They had the distinction of being the only 
community of the Teutonic race which did 
not deem human slavery wrong; in their 
social theory, they had parted company 
with England, France, Germany and Italy, 
and were ranged with Spain and Brazil. 

The aim of the Northern men was to save 
the Union, to maintain the integrity of the 
nation. They had undertaken to conquer 
the wills of five and one-half million people 
— a community as advanced as themselves, 
except, owing to their peculiar institution, in 
the arts and manufactures, in business train- 
ing and in scientific thought, and apparently 
their superiors in certain qualities which go 
to make up the soldier. Moreover, the 
nature of the conflict required the Northern 
troops to take the offensive by marching 
into the Confederate States; the fighting 
must be on Southern soil. Not the defence 



LINCOLN 99 

of Washington but the taking of Eichmond 
was the task before them. For such war- 
fare, the ratio of five to two in population 
was none too great, and required to be sup- 
ported by the actual superiority in wealth 
and in industrial resources. Had the dis- 
parity been less, the North might have 
failed, especially as the expectation of the 
South that, by an exchange of its cotton 
with Europe, it would be able to supply 
itself with the implements and munitions of 
war, and the necessaries of life seemed by 
no means extravagant.^ 

The preponderating asset of the North 
proved to be Lincoln. Himself one of the 
''plain people " he both represented and led 
them ; between the day of the firing on 
Sumter and the 4th of July following, when 
he called Congress together in special ses- 
sion, he gained a clear conception of the 
nature of the contest and realized that he 
might carry it on successfully as long as he 
had the support of pubhc sentiment. When 

1 III, 397 et seq. 



100 LINCOLN'S POWER 

he addressed Congress, he had also the peo- 
ple in mind and he appealed to them with 
lasting effect. He needed their support, as 
his proclamation, ordering a substantial 
increase of the army and navy,^ and his 
authorization to the commanding general, in 
proper cases, according to his discretion, to 
suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas 
corpus were stretches of constitutional 
authority.^ The minister from the Hanse- 
atic towns to Washington, a shrewd ob- 
server withal, wrote that Lincoln exercised 
unlimited power, to as great an extent, if 
not even greater, than Louis Napoleon, the 
only difference being that the Emperor had 
the army and the President the people at 
his back.^ 

In purely political matters, Lincoln had 
not his equal in public life but this country 

1 42,034 volunteers for three years ; 22,714 for the regular 
army; 18,000 for the navy. Ill, 394. 

2 Congress indemnified him for his act in increasing the army 
and navy, but did not come to a vote on the habeas corpus matter. 
Ill, 438. See also Lincoln, Complete Works, II, 59 ; Nicolay and 
Hay, IV, 176. 

» ni, 442. 



DAVIS — LEE 101 

attorney of Illinois was now become com- 
mander-in-chief of the army and navy of 
the United States ; having received neither 
practical military training nor theoretical 
instruction he was suddenly called upon to 
conduct a great war. In this respect his 
marked inferiority to Jefferson Davis was 
striking. Davis was a graduate from the 
Military Academy of West Point, had 
served brilliantly as colonel during the war 
with Mexico and afterwards had for four 
years made an efficient head of the United 
States War Department.^ 

Lincoln, conscious of his deficiency, made 
an unofficial offer of the active command of 
the Union forces to Robert E. Lee, the 
officer in the United States service who had 
the most worthy record and gave the best 
promise of capable leadership, Lee declined 
the offer for the reason that he could take 
no part in an invasion of the Southern 
States, resigned his commission, accepted 
the generalship of the Virginia forces and 

1 1, 389. 



102 ROBERT E. LEE 

eventually became commander of the army 
of Northern Virginia, the most important 
and the most celebrated army of the South- 
ern Confederacy.^ 

If Lee had seen his duty in the same 
light as did two other well-known Virginia 
officers, Scott and Thomas, who steadfastly 
adhered to the Union, Lincoln would have 
had a right arm and the war would have 
been shorter. Lee was drawn in both ways. 
He had a soldier's devotion to the flag and 
loved the Union, which was especially dear 
to him as product of the labor of Washing- 
ton ; he deemed " slavery as an institution 
a moral and political evil." Although be- 
lieving that Northern aggressions had given 
the South just cause of grievance he did not 
consider the grievance sufficiently acute for 
resort to revolution — and to him secession 
meant nothing less. Nevertheless when 
Virginia seceded, his notion of States' rights 
seconded by a strong feeling of allegiance to 
his State prevailed, after a painful struggle, 

im, 365, 380; IV, 29. 



ROBERT E. LEE 103 

over all other considerations. A careful 
survey of his life and character is perfectly 
convincing as to the motives leading to this 
momentous decision ; a high sense of honor 
pointed the way, a pure and inexorable con- 
science approving. 

Lee, now fifty-four, showed in his face 
the ruddy glow of health whilst his head 
was as yet untinged with gray. Physically 
and morally he was a splendid example of 
manhood. Tracing his lineage far back in 
the mother-country and having in his veins 
the best of Virginian blood, he seemed to 
have inherited all the virtues of a chivalrous 
race without any of their vices. Honest, 
sincere, simple, magnanimous, forbearing, 
courteous and dignified, he was at the same 
time sensitive on points of honor but was 
generally successful in keeping a high tem- 
per under control. After his graduation 
from West Point, his Hfe had been exclu- 
sively that of a soldier, yet he had none of a 
soldier's bad habits. He used neither 
spirits nor tobacco, indulged rarely in a 



104 ROBERT E. LEE 

social glass of wine, and cared nothing for 
the pleasures of the table. He was a good 
engineer and had won distinction in the war 
with Mexico. The work that was assigned 
him had been performed in a systematic 
manner and with conscientious care. *' Duty 
is the sublimest word in our language," he 
wrote to his son. Sincerely religious. 
Providence was to him a verity and it may 
be truly said that he walked with God. In- 
deed in all essential characteristics, Lee re- 
sembled Washington and, had the great 
work of his Hfe been crowned with success 
or had he chosen the winning side, the 
world would doubtless have acknowledged 
that Virginia could in a single century pro- 
duce two men who were the embodiment of 
public and private virtue.^ 

Before composing the fine battle-pieces 
in his history of Frederick the Great, 
Carlyle wrote, " Battles ever since Homer's 
time, when they were Fighting Mobs, have 
mostly ceased to be worth reading of . . . 

1 III, 411. 



BULL RUN 105 

How many wearisome bloody Battles does 
History strive to represent ! " ^ Although 
the thoroughgoing history of a war must of 
necessity be largely one of campaigns and 
battles, it will be my aim in these lectures 
to treat briefly of this phase of my subject 
and to dwell on the salient characteristics 
of the conflict and their bearing on its issue 
rather than on the sequence of movements 
of the armies engaged. 

" Bull Eun," the first battle, was precipi- 
tated by the North in the hope of opening 
a way for the capture of Richmond. On a 
hot July day (1861), a Union army, com- 
posed for the most part of green soldiers, 
attacked an equal number of Confederates 
likewise green.^ The first charge resulted 
in the baptism of General Thomas J. Jack- 
son, with a name that exactly suited his con- 
duct on this occasion. The Confederates 

1 French Revolution, Book VII, Chap. IV. 

2 In the Northern army were nearly 1600 regulars and three 
Massachusetts regiments ■which since January had had somewhat 
of drill. In the Southern army were five South Carolina regi- 
ments and the Hampton Legion which had been under discipline 
more than six months. Ill, 444, 451. 



106 BULL RUN 

were in full retreat and as they ran up the 
slope of a plateau they saw his brigade 
standing in line calmly awaiting the onset, 
an example and encouragement to the 
panic-stricken host, whose general cried out, 
"Look at Jackson ! There he stands like a 
stone wall ! " ^ As " Stonewall " Jackson he 
was known till the day of his death and 
ever afterwards. 

The battle was eventually decided by a 
timely reenforcement at a critical moment of 
2300 Confederates. The Union troops 
broke and ran. The volunteers' retreat 
became a rout and then a panic. " A con- 
fused mob entirely demoralized"^ fled to 
the shelter of the fortifications near Wash- 
ington. 

The North, although amazed and bitterly 
disappointed at this reverse, was not long 
inactive. A second uprising took place. 
Under authority, previously given to the 

1 m, 447. 

* McDowell, the general in command, telegraphed, " The larger 
part of the men are a confused mob entirely demoralized." Ill, 
450. 



SECOND UPRISING OF THE NORTH 107 

President by Congress to accept the ser- 
vices of 500,000 volunteers, recruiting went 
on with vigor, and the time for which men 
engaged themselves was three years or dur- 
ing the war. In a week the North had 
recovered from its dejection, prepared for 
a long conflict. The South received her 
great victory with a quiet sense of tri- 
umph and expressions of profound grati- 
tude to Jehovah, who had wrought so 
powerfully in her behalf. It was believed 
that the North, far from giving up the con- 
test, would be spurred to redoubled efforts 
by the initial repulse.^ 

Because of some minor successes in West- 
ern Virginia, Lincoln and, in the main, the 
country, thought they had discovered an able 
general in McClellan, and he was forthwith 
placed in command of the troops around 
Washington, to whom he gave the designa- 
tion of " Army of the Potomac." He was 
an excellent organizer and well versed in 
the theory of his profession. After he had 

1111,456. 



108 THE ARMY OF THE^ POTOMAC 

been in command a little over a month 
William H. Kussell wrote to the Times, 
" Never perhaps has a finer body of men in 
all respects o^ physique been assembled by 
any power in the world, and there is no 
reason why their morale should not be im- 
proved so as to equal that of the best troops 
in Europe." ^ But McClellan was no fighter. 
Nursing the delusion that the Confederate 
force in front of him was equal to his own 
he would not attack, although he really out- 
numbered them three to one. Russell, who 
was a keen observer and had visited the 
South — who had, moreover, witnessed the 
rout at Bull Run — thought that McClellan 
ought to beat the enemy " in spite of their 
advantages of position." ^ But as Lowell ex- 
pressed it, " Our chicken was no eagle after 
all."^ Anthony Trollope, who paid us a 
visit at this time, wrote that " belief in Mc- 
Clellan seemed to be shpping away."* But 
the general continued to drill and organize 
the troops, letting slip an extraordinary op- 

1 in, 493. 2IU. 495. sni, 499. •* III, 579. 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 109 

portunity for striking a decisive blow. With 
the end of the year 1861, eight months and 
more of war had accomplished nothing 
towards bringing back into the Union a 
single Confederate State. On the contrary 
the shedding of blood had made the chasm 
wider. 

In February 1862 hope came from the 
Southwest where Ulysses S. Grant won an 
important \dctory. Having invested Fort 
Donelson^ he repulsed a sortie and forced 
the Confederate garrison to surrender, inci- 
dentally acquiring the name expressive of 
his resolute character. The Confederate 
general asked for terms. None but *' Un- 
conditional Surrender" was Grant's reply: 
U. S. being the initials of his name, he be- 
came known thenceforth as " Unconditional 
Surrender Grant. "^ The North rejoiced with 
exuberance if somewhat prematurely. " The 
underpinning of the rebellion seems to be 
knocked out from under it," wrote Chase.^ 

1 In the State of Tennessee on the Cumberland River. 

2111,593. 

* Secretary of the Treasury. Ill, 598. 



110 FALL OF FORT DONELSON 

When Doctor Oliver Wendell Holmes went 
into his lecture room at the Harvard Medical 
School, the class began clapping loudly, then 
cheering, until, in his own words, "I, a grave 
college professor, . . . had to give in myself, 
and flourishing my wand in the air, joined 
with the boys in their rousing hurrahs."^ 

The fall of Donelson was to the South 
what Bull Bun had been to the North,^ the 
first serious reverse and doubly bitter, for 
that matter, inasmuch as the inactivity of 
the Army of the Potomac following upon 
Bull Kun itself had led the Confederates to 
believe that in the field they were invinci- 
ble. During the period of dejection that 
ensued, the permanent government of the 
Confederacy was established and Davis was 
inaugurated President in Eichmond for a 
term of six years.^ On his recommendation, 
the Confederate Congress passed a conscrip- 

1 III, 598. 

2 In connection with the capture of Fort Henry on the Ten- 
nessee River ten days earlier. Ill, 582. 

* The government of the Confederacy was carried on for one 
year under the provisional constitution and the, legislative body 



MERRIMAC AND MONITOR 111 

tion act requiring of all white men between 
the ages of eighteen and thirty-five three 
years of military service.^ It was nearly a 
year later that the North was forced to adopt 
this rigorous but just method of carrying on 
a war. 

Less than a month after Donelson, oc- 
curred the fight between the Merrimac and 
the Monitor, which attracted especial atten- 
in England as it was the first encounter be- 
tween ironclads. The Merrimac had with 
the utmost ease destroyed two wooden ves- 
sels of war, and was preparing for further 
blows to be directed against the blockade of 
Southern ports — an indispensable condition 
of Northern success — when she was inter- 
cepted and engaged by the Monitor. The 
battle demonstrated that the Merrimac could 
be held in check : she did no further dam- 
age.^ 

was called the provisional Congress. Davis was President of the 
Confederacy under this temporary organization. The first Con- 
gress under the permanent Constitution met Feb. 18, 1862, four 
days previous to Davis's inauguration. Ill, 322, 600. 

1 III, 606. 2 iii^ 608 et seq. 



112 CAPTURE OF NEW ORLEANS 

The effective work of the Union navy was 
further seen in the taking of New Orleans, 
a city of 168,000 inhabitants, the chief com- 
mercial port and the largest city of the 
South. It was " the crowning stroke of ad- 
verse fortune " said the Confederate Secre- 
tary of War.^ New Orleans was so well known 
in Europe as an important trading point that 
its capture had a profound effect on opinion 
in England and France.^ Could these suc- 
cesses be followed up by others, the North 
might speedily triumph but it was soon to ap- 
pear that Fate had decreed otherwise. When 
it seemed as if " that rare son of the tem- 
pest,"^ a great commander, had appeared. 
Grant through carelessness, allowed his 
prestige to fade. Partially surprised at 
Shiloh, he converted a defeat into a drawn 
battle only by a timely reenforcement and 
with enormous loss. His record in the reg- 
ular army, seven years before the civil war, 
had been clouded by habits of intemperance, 

1 Official Records Series IV, U, 281. « ni, 630. 

* Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, I, 181. 



THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC 113 

which resulted in his resignation and a gen- 
eral impression that " his life was hopelessly 
wrecked."^ Now it was feared that he had 
had a relapse and the pressure on the Presi- 
dent for his removal was great. But Lin- 
coln stood by Grant saying with great 
earnestness to one who had stated the gen- 
eral protest, *' / cayiit spare this man ; he 
fights."' 

Of the Army of the Potomac, under the 
command of McClellan, Edward Dicey wrote, 
'' I have seen the armies of most European 
countries and I have no hesitation in saying 
that, as far as the average raw material of 
the rank and file is concerned, the American 
army is the finest." ^ These men full of 
courage and eager for a speedy end to the 
war were longing to be led against the enemy 
but their general would not give the word 
Had heseized the moment of discouragement 
of the Confederates over their reverses in 
the Southwest, a cheap victory awaited him. 
Before Donelson Lincoln, by the Constitu- 

1 III, 596. 2 iii^ 627 et ante. « HI, 604. 

I 



114 ADVANCE ON^ RICHMOND 

tion the Commander-in-Chief, in great dis- 
tress and realizing the necessity of action, 
said in his whimsical way, " If General Mc- 
Clellan does not want to use the army I 
would like to borrow it." ^ From entreaty 
he passed to command and then the General 
haggled over the plan of campaign. The 
President desired the advance to be made 
directly on Richmond while McClellan 
wished to transport his army part way by 
water and make the movement up the Pen- 
insula. At that time, no Northern general 
had developed sufficiently to warrant a 
change in commanders so Lincoln yielded 
the point and gave consent to McClellan's 
plan.^ But the general's procrastination 
had allowed the Confederates time to recover 
from their reverses so that, when he came 
in sight of the spires of Richmond, Joseph 
E. Johnston, the successful commander at 
Bull Run, had a well-equipped force of 63,000 
to meet his 100,000. Meanwhile Stonewall 
Jackson made a swift march northward, 

1 in, 580. a ni, 614 ; IV, 2 e^ seq. 



SEVEN DAYS' BATTLES 115 

won a series of brilliant battles, alarmed the 
President and Secretary of War for the safety 
of Washington and thus prevented a con- 
templated reenforcement of 40,000 troops to 
the Union army before Richmond. 

Although McClellan had started on an 
offensive campaign, it was not he but his 
adversary who took the initiative. Johnston 
made the attack, brought on a battle of two 
days' duration and achieved a partial success 
although meeting in the end with a repulse. 
The Union troops pushed forward within 
four miles of Richmond but receiving no or- 
der from their commander to hold the ground, 
fell back to the lines occupied before the 
battle. Johnston was wounded and Robert 
E. Lee succeeded to the command of the 
Army of Northern Virginia. Reenforced 
by Stonewall Jackson, he brought on the 
" Seven Days' Battles" in the course of which 
his success was not continuous, for the Union 
army was a formidable fighting machine even 
though its Commander did not know how 
to use it. McClellan was forced to abandon 



116 GLOOM OF THE NORTH 

his oflfensive attitude and retreat to ttie 
James Eiver : his Peninsular campaign had 
been an utter failure. During that week of 
hard fighting, Lee gained the love and con- 
fidence of his soldiers, which were never 
afterwards lost but grew larger as the war 
went on. 

Once again was it the turn of the North 
to be plunged in gloom, and far deeper this 
time than after Bull Run. Lowell wrote in 
a private letter, " I don't see how we are to 
be saved but by a miracle." ^ "I have man- 
aged to skim the newspaper " wrote Charles 
Darwin to Asa Gray, " but had not heart 
to read all the bloody details. Good God ! 
What will the end be ? " ^ Lincoln grew 
pale and haggard with anxiety and dejection. 
But he said, " I expect to maintain this con- 
test until successful, or till I die or am con- 
quered, or my term expires, or Congress or 
the country forsakes me." ^ He called for 
300,000 more three years' men. He made 

» Letters, I, 322. ^ More letters of C. Darwin, I, 203. 

« IV, 55. 



NEW GENERALS 117 

up a new army and summoned a man from 
the West ^ to command it ; lie ordered an- 
other generaP to Washington as General- 
in-Chief who proved too timid to exercise 
his authority but became useful as the Presi- 
dent's chief-of- staff. Throughout this in- 
terval of gloom and demand for further 
self-sacrifice, Lincoln retained the confi- 
dence and support of the people. A favorite 
song during this dreary summer was, " We 
are coming. Father Abraham, three hundred 
thousand more." ^ 

McClellan and his army were withdrawn 
from the Peninsula. The military records 
show confusion and hopeless mismanage- 
ment in the efforts of the three generals, the 
President and his Secretary of War to work 
together in harmony. On the other side 
Lee was supreme ; he consulted no one ; 
now he took to studying the new general 
from the West. " Frederick the Great," 
wrote Carlyle, " always got to know his 

1 John rope, IV, 97. = pieiiry W. Halleck, IV, 97. 

, « IV, 55, 76, 97. 



118 LEE AND JACKSON 

man after fighting him a month or two ; and 
took liberties with him or did not take ac- 
cordingly."^ This task of learning to com- 
prehend one's adversary was made compar- 
atively easy in our Civil War, for the reason 
that most of the opposing commanders had 
become personally acquainted at West Point 
or during their service in Mexico. The 
Western general issued a tactless and boast- 
ful address to his new army. In military 
attainments, he was inferior to McClellan 
and in temper his opposite, being an im- 
petuous and incautious fighter. Lee and 
Jackson played with him, crushing and de- 
moralizing his army and again causing con- 
siderable alarm lest Washington be taken.^ 
In the shifting of troops, McClellan had 



1 IV, 116. 

2 IV, 97 et seq. Under date of Sept. 7, 1862, Charles Eliot 
Norton wrote to George W. Curtis : " These days . . . have been 
in some important respects the most disheartening that we have 
yet been through. They have been worse than days of more seri- 
ous disaster, for they have betrayed alike the incompetence of our 
generals and the vacillations of our administration at a time when 
there was special need of good generalship and of vigorous pur- 
pose." Atlantic Monthly, November 1912, 607. 



McCLELLAN 119 

been deprived of all actual command. But 
now he was the only resource. The Presi- 
dent was compelled to put him at the head 
of the combined armies.^ Rank and file 
were overjoyed. They loved McClellan and 
greeted him now with rousing cheers which 
showed their eagerness to fight if he would 
lead.^ Lee had crossed the Potomac river 
into Maryland and was for the first time en- 
camped in full force on Northern soil. A 
lucky revelation of his immediate projects 
now supplied McClellan with a brilliant op- 
portunity to crush the invading forces.^ To 
maintain his line of communication, Lee was 
forced to divide his army. His written order 

1 Under date of Sept. 7, 1862, Welles, the Secretary of the Navy, 
made this note in his Diary : 

" The President said with much emphasis : ' I must have 
McClellan to reorganize the army and bring it out of chaos . . . 
there is no remedy at present, McClellan has the army with him.' 
My convictions are with the President that McClellan and his gen- 
erals are this day stronger than the Administration with a consid- 
erable portion of this Army of the Potomac. It is not so elsewhere 
with the soldiers, or in the country, where McClellan has lost favor. 
The people are disappointed in him, but his leading generals have 
contrived to strengthen him in the hearts of the soldiers in front of 
Washington." I, 113, 114. 

2 IV, 136. » IV, 139 et seq. 



120 McCLELLAN'S MISSED OPPORTUNITY 

for this movement was sent to tliree generals, 
one of whom " pinned it securely in an inside 
pocket," another memorized it " and then 
chewed it up," while the third lost it. The 
lost order was found and taken to McClellan, 
who after the signature of Lee's adjutant was 
verified, wrote to the President, " I have all 
the plans of the rebels and will catch them 
in their own trap if my men are equal to 
the emergency."^ His men and officers 
were equal to the emergency but McClellan 
was not. The occasion demanded a celerity 
of movement of which he was incapable. 
He gained a partial victory in the Battle of 
Antietam but, at the time, it was sickening 
to think how much more might have been 
accomplished. The same reflection was in- 
evitable in connexion with the battle itself 
In the words of military critics it was, on 
the Union side, " a day of isolated attacks 
and wasted efforts " ; the conduct of the 
battle " by Lee and his subordinates seems 

1 IV, 145 ; Hosmer, Appeal to Arms (Hart's American Nation), 
189. 



TRUE REASON OF THE CONFLICT 121 

absolutely above criticism."^ Nevertheless 
they retreated into Virginia. The two 
armies then had an interval of rest before 
renewing the active conflict which was des- 
tined to be waged for another two and a 
half-years. 

In my account of the military movements 
I have purposely fallen into the method of 
the two combatants in obscuring the true 
reason of the conflict. But this method 
could not then nor can it now, be long per- 
sisted in, for both actor and historian find 
themselves constantly running against the 
reality behind the pretext. No one knew it 
better than Lincoln but he gauged public 
sentiment too well to be willing to change 
the ostensible to the real purpose by public 
avowal until the people were ready to follow 
him. He turned a deaf ear to over-zealous 
counsellors; he rescinded orders for the 
emancipation of slaves issued by officious 
generals ; and all the while he was reflect- 
ing how slavery might best be attacked. 

1 IV, 154. 



122 COMPENSATED EMANCIPATION 

Congress had prohibited slavery in all the 
existing territories and in any that should 
hereafter be acquired, thus enacting the 
principle which had led to the formation of 
the Republican party ; in the District of 
Columbia, the seat of the national govern- 
ment, it had abolished slavery, with com- 
pensation for the owners of the slaves,^ 
thereby taking a further step forward, 
which, on prudential grounds, had not been 
declared for in the two Republican national 
platforms. In March 1862, while fortune 
was prospering the Northern arms, the Presi- 
dent suggested to Congress that they offer, 
on the part of the United States, pecuniary 
aid to any State that should adopt the grad- 
ual abolishment of slavery. Though it was 
hardly supposed that the Confederate States 
would heed the offer, it was nevertheless 
open to them all, and if anyone of them or 
all had, in this hour of Northern success, 
agreed to lay down their arms and respect 
the authority of the national government, 

1 III, 631. 



COMPENSATED EMANCIPATION 123 

no reasonable doubt can exist that they 
would have received, in a plan of gradual 
emancipation,^ about four hundred dollars 
for each slave set free. The record of Lin- 
coln and the Republican party on slavery is 
clear ; their course was conservative and in 
line with the best traditions of England and 
America. Before Sumter was fired upon, 
they had practically agreed to guarantee in 
perpetuity the possession of slaves to their 
owners in all the slave States ; now, after 
nearly a year of war and in the hour of 
victory, when the logic of events showed 
that slavery must go, they were willing to 
reimburse the slave owners, in spite of the 
detriment, both moral and material, which 
they had caused the common country.^ 

Mainly theoretical and entirely iiTcaliz- 
able as was this scheme, so far as it con- 
cerned the seceded States, it should have 
appealed to the border slave States that had 



^ " Gradual and not sudden emancipation is better for all." 
Lincoln's Message Mar. 6, 1862. 
2 III, 631, et seq. 



124 COMPENSATED EMANCIPATION 

remained in the Union as possessing a very 
substantial practical value. Lincoln ad- 
dressed them again and again urging them 
with irrefutable argument and fervent appeal 
to accept compensation for their slaves 
while it was in his power to give it, but he 
was unable to secure their assent to the 
plan.^ Bound up as was slavery with their 
social and political life, they could not 
understand that its doom was certain. 
Then came the change in the military situ- 
ation further stiffening their resistance. 
Pending the discussion, the Northern suc- 
cesses of the spring were followed by Mc- 
Clellan's disastrous failure in the Peninsula 
and, during the ensuing interval of appre- 
hension lest the cause of the North should 
fail, the question arose of how much value 
were the promises to pay of the United 
States. The proposition was that the pay- 
ment for the slaves should be made in six 
per cent bonds, and, though Lincoln, it is 
said, suggested that bonds were better prop- 

ini, 631, 633; IV, 65, 67, 215. , 



MILITARY EMANCIPATION 125 

erty than bondsmen/ many of the border 
State men thought otherwise. But it is 
certain that, if the border slave States had 
acted promptly, they would have received 
for their slaves a fair compensation in United 
States bonds instead of having subsequently 
to sustain a flat monetary loss through the 
gift of freedom to the negroes. 

Lincoln now began preparing for the ur- 
gent and inevitable move whose " gravity, 
importance and delicacy " demanded of him 
the most earnest and careful study. During 
the summer, a period of deep gloom at the 
North, he had come to the conclusion that 
since the slaves were growing the food for 
the Confederate soldiers and serving as 
teamsters and laborers on intrenchments in 
the army service, " it was a military neces- 
sity, absolutely essential for the salvation 
of the Union, that we must free the slaves 
or be ourselves subdued."^ On July 22, 
1862 he submitted to his Cabinet a procla- 
mation embodying this idea but postponed 

1 IV, 218. 2 IV, 69 ; Welles's Diary, I, 70. 



126 EMANCIPATION POSTPONED 

its issue, because of an objection of Sew- 
ard's, that, if it were now given to the 
country in the midst of our military disas- 
ters, it might be looked upon as " a cry for 
help, the government stretching forth its 
hands to Ethiopia " and as " our last shriek 
on the retreat."^ Better wait, he argued, 
till it be supported by military success. 
Seeing the wisdom of Seward's objection, 
the President laid the draft of the procla- 
mation aside. 

The secret of this Cabinet meeting was 
strictly kept. The facts as known to-day 
furnish a curious commentary on Greeley's 
public complaint of twenty-nine days later 
which with characteristic egoism he entitled 
" The Prayer of Twenty Millions " ; it was 
addressed to the President, and was based 
upon the assertion " that the Union cause 
is now suffering immensely from your mis- 
taken deference to rebel slavery." This 
open letter gave Lincoln a chance through 
the press to iterate his policy which he 

» IV, 72, et ante. 



EMANCIPATION DECIDED 127 

continued publicly to adhere to with con- 
sistency. " My paramount object in this 
struggle," he wrote, " is to save the Union 
and is not either to save or to destroy slav- 
ery." On the other hand he wrote to a 
Conservative, " I shall not surrender this 
game leaving any available card unplayed." 
From these and other utterances, during the 
two months preceding a certain day sacred 
in our annals, the working of Lincoln's mind 
is open to us. At the Cabinet meeting of 
September 22, 1862, after some general talk, 
the President claimed the attention of his 
ministers, reading from Artemus Ward's book 
a chapter entitled " High-handed outrage at 
Utica." He thought it very funny and en- 
joyed reading it, while the members of the 
Cabinet, except the grave Secretary of War, 
laughed with him. Lincoln then became 
very serious and told of his reflections on 
the slavery question since the July meeting. 
Lee has been driven out of Maryland, he 
said, and I am going to fulfil the promise 
I made to myself and to my Maker. " I 



128 PROCLAMATION OF EMANCIPATION 

have got you together to hear what I have 
written down. I do not wish your advice 
about the main matter ; for that I have de- 
termined for myself." He read then his 
proclamation of freedom : " On the first day 
of January in the year of our Lord one 
thousand, eight hundred and sixty-three, all 
persons held as slaves within any State or 
designated part of a State, the people whereof 
shall then be in rebellion against the United 
States shall be then, henceforward, and for- 
ever free." ^ 

iIV, 72, 157 et ante. Hay made this entry in his Diary on 
Sept. 23, 1862 : " The President wrote the Proclamation on Sunday 
morning carefully. He called the Cabinet together on Monday, 
Sept. 22, made a little talk to them and read the momentous docu- 
ment." Later. " Chase [Secretary of the Treasury] spoke ear- 
nestly of the Proclamation. He said, ' This was a most wonder- 
ful history of an insanity of a class that the world had ever seen. 
If the slaveholders had staid in the Union, they might have kept 
the life in their institution for many years to come. That what 
no party and no public feeling in the North could ever have hoped 
to touch, they had madly placed in the very path of destruction.' " 
Letters and Diary of John Hay, I, 66, 67. 

Welles under date of Sept. 22 wrote in his Diary concerning 
the Proclamation of Emancipation : " A favorable termination of 
this terrible conflict seems more remote with every movement, and 
unless the Rebels [as the Confederates were generally called at the 
North] hasten to avail themselves of the alternative presented, of 
which I see little probability, the war can scarcely be other than 



PROCLAMATION OF EMANCIPATION 129 

one of emancipation to the slave, or subjugation, or submission to 
their Rebel owners. There is in the Free States a very general 
impression that this measure will insure a speedy peace. I cannot 
say that I so view it. No one in those States dare advocate peace 
as a means of prolonging slavery, even if it is his honest opinion, 
and the pecuniary, industrial, and social sacrifice impending will 
intensify the struggle before us. While, however, these dark 
clouds are above and around us, I cannot see how the subject can 
be avoided. Perhaps it is not desirable it should be. It is, how- 
ever, an arbitrary and despotic measure in the cause of freedom." 
I, 145. 

It has always seemed to me a remarkable circumstance that 
Lincoln should have opened this Cabinet meeting by reading a 
chapter from Artemus Ward's book. There can be no question 
that he was very much impressed with the seriousness of the act 
he was about to perform. His summer had been full of perplexity 
and disappointment. Until Antietam he had had nothing but 
military failure. McClellan's Peninsular Campaign had come 
to naught. Lee's army had defeated the new general from the 
West, and, flushed with victory, had threatened Washington, 
Baltimore and Harrisburg. From, a Confederate army in Ken- 
tucky, Cincinnati had been in imminent danger of capture and, at 
the time of this Cabinet meeting, Louisville stood in jeopardy. 
The President had hoped that McClellan would destroy Lee's 
army. The victory at Antietam simply turned back the Confed- 
erate invasion. That a man of deep feeling, who had had so much 
distress, who knew that the actors in great scenes of history 
ushered them in with gravity, generally with pomp and prayer, 
should have begun this solemn Cabinet meeting in a manner so 
grotesque, is extraordinary. 

W. D. Howells writes in an Introduction to Artemus Ward's 
Best Stories (1912) : " It must have been something more than the 
bad spelling which gave Artemus Ward's humor a currency beyond 
that of all other humorists before his time. . . . Men of my age 
will remember the universal joy in his fable of his interview with 
the Prince of Wales then visiting our States. ... It must be 
owned that Artemus Ward had not j\lark Twain's greatness of na- 

K 



130 ARTEMUS WARD 

ture, his generous scope, his actual humanity. . . . He felt bound 
to make you laugh first of all ; Mark Twain felt bound to make 
you laugh, too, but not always first of all ; he might first wish to 
make you feel. ... In some of his beginnings Mark Twain 
formed himself from, if not on, Artemus Ward. The imitation 
could not last long; the great master was so immensely the 
master. . . . We must remember how Lincoln loved Artemus 
Ward and sought him in times of trouble when wiser and better 
authorities could not have consoled him nearly so much. . . . 
Artemus Ward's fame took him to England where probably the 
happiest years of his short life were spent. Charles Reade called 
him ' Artemus the delicious.' The English liked him with that 
self abandon which wins the American heart, and made him so 
wholly at home among them that, after some brief intervals in 
America, he returned to die in England." Pp. viii, ix, xi, xiv, xv. 



LECTURE III 

FROM THE PROCLAMATION OF EMANCIPATION, 1862, 
TO THE SURRENDER AT APPOMATTOX, 1865 

The first response of the country to 
Lincoln's Proclamation of Emancipation is- 
sued on September 22, 1862 was unfavor- 
able. In the autumn elections, many of 
the important Northern States declared 
against the party in power, whose majority 
in the House of Representatives newly 
chosen was materially reduced.^ The elec- 
tions were characterized as a ''vote of want 
of confidence " in the President, and to this 
result the Proclamation was undoubtedly a 
contributing force. But the dominant fac- 
tor was the failure of our armies to accom- 
plish decisive results in the field. Had 
McClellan captured or destroyed Lee's 
army at Antietam the President would 
have received at the ballot-box a triumphant 

1 IV, 163 ; Life of Morton, Foulke, I, 207. 
131 



132 LINCOLN'S DELIBERATION 

approval of his whole policy. The defeat 
of the administration party in important 
States which was brought about by its 
former friends staying away from the polls, 
was a symptom of weariness of the war, a 
protest against the waste of so much life 
and money with an almost entire absence 
of results. 

Lincoln made up his mind slowly. 
Nearly all his decisions were the outcome 
of careful deliberation, but, the decision 
once arrived at, he was thenceforth immov- 
able. By gradual steps, he had come to 
the policy of emancipation and to it he was 
determined to stick in spite of the defeat 
of his party at the ballot-box and other 
discouraging events during the hundred 
days that intervened between the prelimi- 
nary proclamation of September 22 and its 
necessary complement of January 1, 1863. 
Although the form of the preliminary 
proclamation implied that some of the Con- 
federates or all might lay down their arms 
to avoid the loss of their slaves, no such 



PROCLAMATION OF JANUARY 1, 1863 133 

outcome was seriously regarded as possible. 
Doubt no longer existed that a united people 
in the South were earnest in their desire to 
secure their independence and that, if the 
proclamation had affected them at all, it 
was to make them more determined than 
ever in their resistance by giving force to 
the argument that the war of the North 
was a crusade against their social institu- 
tions. Eegarding the proclamation " as a 
fit and necessary war measure," the Presi- 
dent wrote on January 1, 1863, " I do order 
and declare that all persons held as slaves " 
in the States or parts of States resisting the 
United States government '' are, and hence- 
forward shall be, free. . . . Upon this act, 
sincerely believed to be an act of justice, 
warranted by the Constitution upon mili- 
tary necessity I invoke the considerate judg- 
ment of mankind and the gracious favor of 
Ahnighty God."^ 



1 IV, 213 et ante. " I am naturally anti-slavery," Lincoln wrote 
in a letter of Apr. 4, 1864. " If slavery is not wrong nothing is 
wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so think and feel, and 



134 LINCOLN'S ARGUMENT 

In spite of tlie expressed fears of un- 
friendly critics in England and in our own 
country, the Proclamation did not excite 

yet I have never understood that the presidency conferred upon 
me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and 
feeling. It was in the oath I took that I would, to the best of 
my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the 
United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath. 
Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get power and 
break the oath in using the power. I understood, too, that in 
ordinary civil administration this oath even forbade me to prac- 
tically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the moral ques- 
tion of slavery. I had publicly declared this many times and in 
many ways. And I aver, that, to this day, I have done no official 
act in mere deference to my abstract judgment and feeling on slavery. 
I did understand, however, that my oath to preserve the Constitu- 
tion to the best of my ability imposed upon me the duty of preserv- 
ing, by every indispensable means, that government — that nation, 
of which that Constitution was the organic law. ... I felt that 
measures otherwise unconstitutional might become lawful by 
becoming indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution 
through the preservation of the nation. Right or wrong, I assumed 
this ground. ... I could not feel that to the best of my ability, 
I had even tried to preserve the Constitution, if, to save slavery or 
any minor matter, I should permit the wreck of government, 
country and Constitution all together. . . . When in March and 
May and July, 1862, I made earnest and successive appeals to the 
Border States to favor compensated emancipation, I believed the 
indispensable necessity for military emancipation and arming 
the blacks would come unless averted by that measure. They 
declined the proposition and I was, in my best judgment, driven to 
the alternative of either surrendering the Union, and with it the 
Constitution, or of laying strong hand upon the colored element. 
I chose the latter." Lincoln wrote in a letter of Aug. 26, 1863 : " I 
think the Constitution invests its Commander-in-chief with the 



NO SERVILE INSURRECTION 135 

servile insuiTection/ although it completed 
the process, which the war had begun, of 
making every slave in the South a friend 
of the North. Every negro knew that if he 
got within the lines of the Federal armies, 

law of war in time of war. The most that can be said — if so much 
— is that slaves are property. Is there — has there ever been — any 
question that by the law of war, property, both of enemies and 
friends, may be taken when needed ? And is it not needed when- 
ever taking it helps us, or hurts the enemy? Armies, the world 
over destroy enemies' property when they cannot use it ; and even 
destroy their own to keep it from the enemy. Civilized belliger- 
ents do all in their power to help themselves or hurt the enemy, 
except a few things regarded as barbarous or cruel." IV, 213, 214. 
^ The evidence warrants the oft-repeated statement that the 
blacks made no move to rise. " A thousand torches," Henry 
Grady declared, " would have disbanded the Southern Army, but 
there was not one." Instead of rising they showed patient sub- 
mission and fidelity to their owners. It was their labor that pro- 
duced food for the soldiers fighting to keep them in slavery and 
without them the cotton could not have been raised which brought 
supplies from Europe and the North. Our great strength, declared 
a Confederate official, consists in our system of slave labor be- 
cause it " makes our 8,000,000 productive of fighting material equal 
to the 20,000,000 of the Xorth." One owner or overseer to twenty 
slaves was exempted from military service " to secure the proper 
police of the country," but a study of the life indicates that he was 
needed not for their restraint but for their intelligent direction. 
As a matter of fact the able-bodied negroes were at home on the 
plantation in the sparsely settled country of the Confederacy while 
with few exceptions the white people in the neighborhood were old 
or diseased men, women and children. It is a wonderful picture, 
one that discovers virtues in the Southern negroes and merit in the 
civilization under which they had been trained. V, 460, 461. 



136 LINCOLN'S WISDOM 

the aspiration of his life would be realized ; 
he would become a free man. Before the 
close of the year 1863, there were in the 
United States military service 100,000 
former slaves, about one-half of which num- 
ber actually bore arms in the ranks. But 
for the policy of emancipation these negroes 
would probably have remained at the South, 
growing food for the able-bodied white men, 
all of whom were forced into the Confeder- 
ate army by the rigorous conscription.^ 

In addition to military emancipation, the 
President proposed to give the slaves their 
freedom in a strictly legal manner and to 
insure the compensation of their owners by 
the Federal government. In his annual 
message to Congress of December 1, 1862, 
he took as his text the sound and now 
familiar proposition that " Without slavery 
the rebellion [as he and the North called the 
Civil War] could never have existed ; with- 
out slavery it could not continue," and 

1 IV, 215. From 1863 to 1865, 180,000 negroes enlisted under 
the Union flag. IV, 334. 



LINCOLN'S WISDOM 137 

showed in his argument a grasp of the sub- 
ject which, in the light of our subsequent 
experience, has proved him a consummate 
statesman. He pleaded for gradual emanci- 
pation, appointing January 1, 1900, as the 
time when it should be completed to spare 
" both races from the evils of sudden de- 
rangement." ^ It is to be regretted that this 
prophetic appeal was not reenforced by 
victories in the field such as were wont to 
point the utterances of Caesar and Napoleon. 



^ This plan, he argued, saves the slaves "from the vagrant desti- 
tution which must largely attend immediate emancipation in 
localities where their numbers are very great ; and it gives the 
inspiring assurance that their posterity shall be free forever. It 
leaves to each State choosing to act under it to abolish slavery now, 
or at the end of the century, or at any intermediate time, or by 
degrees extending over the whole or any part of the period ; and 
it obliges no two States to proceed alike. It also provides for 
compensation, and generally the mode of making it. . . . It 
is no less true for having been often said, that the people of the 
South are no more responsible for the original introduction of this 
property [property in slaves] than are the people of the North; 
and when it is remembered how unhesitatingly we all use cotton 
and sugar and share the profits of dealing in them, it may not be 
quite safe to say that the South has been more responsible than 
the North for its continuance. If, then, for a common object, this 
property is to be sacrificed, is it not just that it be done at a 
common charge?" Lincoln, Complete Works, II 272. 



138 DISTRUST OF LINCOLN 

As matters stood, distrust of Lincoln per- 
vaded both the Senate and the House and 
for the moment his personal prestige amongst 
the people had paled because his armies had 
made no headway ; so it was hardly surpris- 
ing that his policy of gradual and compen- 
sated emancipation failed to receive the 
approval of either Congress or the country. 
Nevertheless he had shown insight in seiz- 
ing the moment of triumph to issue his 
Proclamation of Emancipation, as from An- 
tietam in September 1862 to Gettysburg 
in July 1863 the North gained no real vic- 
tory and her Army of the Potomac suffered 
two crushing defeats. 

After Antietam the President again made 
strenuous effort to bring McClellan to the 
point of undertaking the vigorous offensive 
operations necessary for striking a decisive 
blow.^ At length his patience worn out by 

1 Welles under date of Oct. 18, 1862 wrote: "It is just five 
weeks since the Battle of Antietam and the army is quiet, repos- 
ing in camp. . . . The country groans. . . . McCleUan is sadly 
afflicted with what the President calls the ' slows '." Diary, I, 
176. 



McCLELLAN REMOVED 139 

the General's temperamental inability to 
reach an '' ideal completeness of prepara- 
tion," he removed him from the command 
of the Army of the Potomac.^ His action 
would have been justifiable, had he known 
an officer equal or superior in military ca- 
pacity to McClellan but although there were 
such men in the Army of the Potomac he 
had failed to discern them. He sent an 
order giving the command to Burnside, a 
man of winning personal qualities, who had 
twice refused it, deeming himself incom- 
petent and McClellan the best fitted of all 
for the place. With deep regret Burnside 
obeyed the President's order and thence- 
forth did not enjoy a happy hour during 
the eighty days that he was in command. 
Promptly taking tlie offensive, he advanced 
his army across a river to make a fi-ontal 
attack on Lee's soldiers, strongly intrenched 

1 IV, 188. Lee remarked to Longstreet that he regretted to 
part with McClellan, " for we always understood each other so 
well. I fear they may continue to make these changes until they 
find some one I don't understand." Hosmer, Appeal to Arms, 
237. 



140 BATTLE OF FREDERICKSBURG 

and under his immediate direction.^ The 
Northern troops fought heroically and did 
their best to carry out the foolhardy orders 
but the only result was a terrible and use- 
less slaughter of the flower of the army, the 
Northern loss exceeding the Southern more 
than twofold. 

The day of this battle, wrote the corre- 
spondent of the Times from Lee's headquar- 
ters, will be "a memorable day to the 
historian of the Decline and Fall of the 
American Republic."^ And so thought 
many Northern people when they came to 
know of the useless sacrifice of so many pre- 
cious lives. During this period of gloom 
and peril the writers of the day declared 
that, an elastic and stout-hearted people 
had been brought to the brink of despond- 
ency; the North had lost heart and hope. 
Greeley in the New York Tvihune advocated 
the mediation of a European power and the 

* Battle of Fredericksburg, IV, 197 et ante. 
2 Issue of Jan. 13, 1863. The day of the battle was Dec. 
13, 1862. IV, 200. 



GLOOM IN THE NORTH 141 

Emperor of the French offered his friendly 
offices for the purpose of bringing about an 
informal conference between the United 
and the Confederate States. The offer was 
at once declined but the certainty that 
Louis Napoleon was eager to interfere in the 
struggle deepened the gloom. The Dem- 
ocrats in a number of the Western States, 
weary of the war, threatened to inau- 
gurate a movement in favor of an armistice 
which should lead to eventual peace. A 
prominent Western journahst, devoted to 
the Northern cause, feared that nothing 
was left but " to fight for a boundary." ^ 

Lincoln was profoundly depressed. It 
was his general who had met this crushing 
defeat and he was responsible for it. So 
declared the Democrats without reserve. 
The Eepublicans, too in private conversation 
and confidential letters, showed that they 
held the same view, although in public they 
were cautious and reticent. Had ours been 
a government of the responsible-ministry 

UV, 222, 223. 



142 LINCOLN'S POSITION 

type, Congress, which was then in session, 
would have voted a want of confidence in 
Lincohi ; and this was the one period dur- 
ing his term of office, when it was just 
doubtful if the country would have sustained 
him. But our President is elected for a 
fixed period of four years and Lincoln had 
not yet served half his term. In his own 
words uttered in an earlier and less grave 
crisis, " There is no way in which I can have 
any other man put where I am. I am here. 
I must do the best I can and bear the re- 
sponsibility of taking the course which I 
feel I ought to take." ^ Congress recognized 
its limitations ; it could not remove Lincoln 
from office and it agreed with him that the 
war must be prosecuted to the end. It gave 
him therefore the sword and purse of the 
nation, passing a rigorous conscription law 
and a drastic financial act, astounding in its 
magnitude of provision for the enormous 
expenses of the war.^ 

Burnside, full of human sympathy, was 

1 IV, 203. 2 IV, 236. 



HOOKER IN COMMAND 143 

wild with grief at his disaster. " Oh those 
men ! Those men over tliere ! " he said, 
pointing across the river where lay the dead 
and womided, ^' I am thinking of them all 
the time." In a turn of frenzied energy, he 
made plans for an advance impossible of 
execution. A new general was imperatively 
needed. The President relieved Burnside 
and placed Hooker in command of the Army 
of the Potomac. 

A preeminent leader and representative 
of popular sentiment, such as Lincoln, in- 
curs a risk in handling military affairs inas- 
much as in time of stress he may set too 
high a value on the voice of the people 
which is not often successful in designating 
a commander of genius and skill. In the 
appointment of Hooker he put in force the 
opinion of the country and of the rank and 
file of the army, which had been formed in 
accordance with the general's record as an 
excellent and dashing corps commander. 
" Fighting Joe " was the name that he had 
won and in the anxious search for a leader, 



144 HOOKER 

it was not unnatural that lie was selected. 
Nevertheless, though Lincoln was a better 
judge of military affairs than any of his 
advisers taken from civil life and though he 
is entitled in this painful crisis to the his- 
torian's most charitable treatment, it is evi- 
dent, from the facts known at the time, that 
the choice of Hooker was unwarrantable. 
For in the general of a democratic army 
nothing but transcendent ability can make 
up for lack of personal character; and 
Hooker was deficient in both respects. 

Nevertheless he was a good organizer, 
put heart into the dispirited army and 
stopped desertions wliich of late had been 
alarmingly frequent. Towards the end of 
April 1863, satisfied that his army was fit 
for action he set forth on his Chancellors- 
ville campaign with 130,000 men to Lee's 
60,000 and, after a capital beginning, lost 
nerve and was completely outgeneralled by 
Lee. Lee knew Hooker better than Lin- 
coln did and showed his contempt of the 
enemy by dividing his army, and sending 



BATTLE OF CHANCELLORSVILLE 145 

Jackson, " the great flanker," on a forced 
march to attack Hooker's right which was 
surprised and put to confusion. In the en- 
suing three days' battle, Lee utterly de- 
feated Hooker^ but sustained an irreparable 
loss in the death of Stonewall Jackson, who, 
by a mischance that the South never ceased 
to lament, was shot by his own men. 

After his army had been given a rest of 
some weeks Lee, believing that nothing was 
to be gained by '* remaining quietly on the 
defensive," ^ began an invasion of the North, 
undoubtedly hoping to defeat the Union 
army, capture Washington and dictate a 
peace or secure European recognition of the 
Southern Confederacy. He soon had an 
army of 75,000 on Pennsylvania soil causing 
intense alarm throughout the North. Every 
Northern man took up his morning news- 

1 IV, 264 et ante. Welles made this entry under date of May 
6, 1863 : " Sumner came into my room, and raising both hands 
exclaimed, ' Lost, lost, all is lost ! ' I asked what be meant 
He said Hooker and his army had been defeated and driven back 
to this side of the Rappahannock. Sumner came direct from the 
President, who, he said, was extremely dejected." Diary, I, 293. 

a IV, 268. 



146 MEADE IN COMMAND 

paper with misgiving, and watclied with 
growing alarm the periodical bulletins that 
told of the progress northward of the Con- 
federate army.^ At this juncture, the North- 
ern cause received a blessing in the disguise of 
a dispute between Hooker and the President's 
chief of staff. Hooker asked to be relieved 
from command and the President, taking him 
at his word, at once put Meade, a true soldier, 
in his place. Lee rated Meade higher than 
Hooker, but thought that the change of 
commanders at this critical moment over- 
balanced the advantage in generalship. 
He had undoubtedly become persuaded that 
he and his army were invincible, and this 

^Welles under date of June 15, 1863 wrote : "Something of a 
panic pervades the city [Washington]. Singular rumors reach us 
of Rebel advances into Maryland. . . . There is trouble, confusion, 
uncertainty, where there should be calm intelligence. I have a 
panic telegraph from Governor Curtin, [Pennsylvania], who is ex- 
citable and easily alarmed, entreating that guns and gunners may 
be sent from the navy yard at Philadelphia to Harrisburg without 
delay. . . . Hooker does not comprehend Lee's intentions nor 
know how to counteract them. ... It looks to me as if Lee was 
putting forth his whole energy and force in one great and desper- 
ate struggle which shall be decisive; that he means to strike a 
blow that will be severely felt, and of serious consequences, and 
thus bring the War to a close." Diary, I, 329, 330. 



BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG 147 

confidence was shared by nearly all of his 
officers and men. The two armies met at 
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and fought for 
three days. On the first two days, the ad- 
vantage was with Lee. Meade was loyally 
supported by his corps commanders and in 
a council of war at the end of the second 
day, although having to reckon with a loss 
of 20,000 men, or more than one-fifth of his 
army, all voted to " stay and fight it out." ^ 
On the third day, after a terrific and 
prolonged cannonade, Lee ordered the fa- 
mous Pickett charge. Under the hot sun 
of a July afternoon, 15,000 men issued 
from the Confederate position to cross the 
open valley, nearly a mile wide, that sepa- 
rated them from the enemy. They received 
first a devastating fire from Meade's bat- 
teries, then a storm of canister and, as 
they drew nearer, the steady fusillade of the 
infantry. The slaughter was terrible, only 



^ For a clear statement of the disadvantages under which 
Meade labored, see C. F. Adams, Studies Military and Diplomatic, 
309. For an account of the Gettysburg campaign, IV, 268 et seq. 



148 VICKSBURG CAMPAIGN 

a few men reached the Union lines. The 
Confederates were forced to retreat. On 
account of the failure of this charge, Lee's 
second and last invasion of the North had 
come to naught. His loss at Gettysburg 
was 28,000 to Meade's 23,000.^ 

At the same hour on July 4 (1863), when 
the President announced the result of the 
battle of Gettysburg to the country, Vicks- 
burg, a strong fortress on the Mississippi 
river and, after Richmond, the most impor- 
tant one in the Confederacy, surrendered to 
General Grant. This event was the cul- 
mination of the most brilliant offensive 
campaign of the war. Many and various 
attempts had been made to capture this 
redoubtable stronghold and finally Grant 
conceived a plan which no other Northern 
general would have had the hardihood to 
execute. '* I became satisfied," he said, 
^' that Vicksburg could only be turned from 
the south side." ^ Crossing the Mississippi 

1 Livermore, Numbers and Losses, 102. The battle of Gettys- 
burg took place July 1, 2, 3, 1863. ^ Nicolay, Hay, VII, 146. 



GRANT'S GENERALSHIP 149 

above Yicksburg wliich is on the east bank, 
he marched to a pohit south of it on the 
west bank where he was dependent on the 
navy for indispensable suppHes. He had 
reckoned on efficient support on the river 
and was not to be disappointed ; gunboats 
with transports heavily loaded with supplies 
succeeded in running past the Confederate 
batteries of Vicksburg. His next projected 
movement must be conducted for the most 
part, in a swamp formed by the river with 
its many bayous and now become unusually 
difficult of passage because of heavy spring 
rains and neglected and broken levees. 
High ground on the east bank must be 
reached somehow ; and when Grant with 
unflagging energy had succeeded in putting 
this formidable problem behind him, a feel- 
mg of relief and confident expectancy 
possessed him such as he rarely experienced 
in his subsequent miUtary career. " The 
battle is now more than half won," he tele- 
graphed to Washington. Nevertheless he 
had still to advance in the face of certain 



150 GRANT'S ENERGY 

opposition through a country where swamps, 
cane-brakes and forests choked with under- 
growth and trailing shrubs followed one 
upon another in disheartening continuity. 
Nothing daunted he cut loose from his base 
and set out to meet the enemy who, in the 
theatre of operations outnumbered him. 
Moving with extraordinary rapidity and 
throwing upon each detachment of the 
Confederates a superior force, he defeated 
them in detail and cleared the way to his 
final objective point. Within nineteen 
days ^ from his recrossing of the Mississippi 
to the east bank in the enemy's territory 
Grant had marched a hundred and eighty 
miles through a most difficult country — 
skirmishing constantly, winning five sep- 
arate battles, inflicting greater loss than he 
sustained, destroying arsenals and capturing 
cannon — and, on May 18, had taken pos- 
session of the dry high ground north of Vicks- 
burg, securing a base of supplies which had 
safe and unobstructed water communication 

1 AprU 30-May 18, 1863. 



GETTYSBURG AND VICKSBURG 151 

with the North.^ He then invested the city 
with engineering skill. 

Throughout the campaign the President 
had given Grant faithful support and he 
now sent him reenforcemcnts adequate to 
defeat any attempt at a relief of the gar- 
rison. Jefferson Davis made strenuous 
efforts to save his important fortress but, 
after draining the resources of the Confed- 
eracy, he could not furnish his general with 
a sufficient force to justify an attack upon 
Grant. The garrison of Vicksburg was 
starved into capitulation.^ 

Gettysburg and Vicksburg were great 
victories. Had the war been one between 
two nations, it would now have undoubtedly 
terminated in a treaty of peace, with condi- 
tions imposed largely by the more success- 
ful combatant. 

Trade relations with Europe were of such 
a character that the North and the South 
could not fight their battle out without refer- 

1 IV, 309 et ante. ^ jy, 310 et seq. 



152 ENGLAND PROCLAIMS NEUTRALITY 

ence to conditions abroad, and, for moral as 
well as material reasons, England was the 
predominant influence. She had opposed 
slavery and the North looked to her for 
sympathy. On the other hand the South- 
erners desired material aid and believed that 
their great staple would compel it. Cotton 
is King, they declared. England must 
have it to keep her factories going and give 
her operatives bread ; she will be eager to 
exchange for cotton her manufactured 
goods which we greatly need.^ The South 
was disappointed. England issued the usual 
proclamation of neutrality but went no fur- 
ther. Nor was the North, at first, any bet- 
ter pleased with the proclamation, since no 
nation likes to see those whom it calls rebels 
accorded belligerent rights. But as Davis 
had invited applications for letters of marque 
and Lincoln had proclaimed a blockade of 
the Southern ports, it seemed to the Eng- 

1 " With their cotton, the Confederates were like Archimedes 
with his lever, confident that they could move the world if they 
once got a place to stand on." Frederic Bancroft, Life of Seward, 
n, 289. 



ENGLISH SENTIMENT 153 

lish government that a state of war existed 
which must be formally recognized.^ Whilst 
considerable dissatisfaction was expressed 
in the North at the so-called '' precipitate " 
concession of belligerency to the Confederate 
States and condemnation of it bulks large in 
the later discussion, England was not actu- 
ated by unfriendly feeling to the North and, 
according to mternational practice, may be 
abundantly justified for her action.^ And 
as soon as the wide difference between the 
concession of belligerent rights and a rec- 
ognition of the independence of the Confed- 
eracy was appreciated, both President and 
people saw that there was, as yet, no ground 
of complaint against Great Britain. At the 
same time, the English had a true concep- 
tion of the conflict. Lord John Russell's 
declaration in the House of Commons that 
the trouble had " arisen from that accursed 

^ III, 417. All the important powers of Europe followed sub- 
stantially the action of Great Britain. 

2111,420; VI, 365 n. 1 ; C. F. Adams, The Treaty of Washington, 
in Lee at Appomattox, 9G ; also paper read before Massachusetts His- 
torical Society, November, 1911 ; Bancroft, Life of Seward, II, 176. 



154 ENGLISH SENTIMENT 

institution of slavery " was generally ap- 
proved ; and Charles Francis Adams, our 
minister to England noted on May 31, 1861 
that the favorable feeling toward the United 
States among the people at large had ex- 
tended to the higher circles.^ *^I have not 
seen or heard of a soul," wrote Charles Dar- 
win in a private letter on June 5 [1861] 
" who is not with the North." ^ But Palmer- 
ston perceived a divided duty saying with 
cynical frankness to an American, " We do 
not like slavery but we want cotton and 
we dislike very much your Morrill tariff." ^ 
This tariff, enacted after the secession of 
the Southern senators, was regarded in 
England as a measure of high protection to 
American manufacturers. 

If the initial victory had been gained by 
the North, the friendly feeling would doubt- 
less have persisted and grown, but the South 
won the first battle and, when the story of 
Bull Run became known, a marked revulsion 

iIII, 426, 429. 2ni, 502. 

8 July 30. Ill, 433. 



ENGLISH SENTIMENT 155 

of sentiment took place. The prominent 
public men distinctly favorable to the South 
were balanced by the outspoken friends of 
the North amongst whom were Bright, 
Cobden, William E. Forster, the Duke of 
Argyll and Thomas E. Hughes ; but the 
main body of the aristocracy and middle 
class thought that the Union could not con- 
quer the Confederacy and earnestly longed 
for the war to cease. The aristocracy will- 
ingly believed that the *' bubble of democracy 
had bru'st in America," aware as they were 
that a divided Union would be less of a 
moral menace than a compact democratic 
federal government to the intrenched rights, 
on which the polity of Great Britain was 
based. In the middle class merchants and 
manufacturers were in dire straits because 
the supply of cotton was cut off. General 
business was deranged in consequence. 
Thousands of workingmen saw hunger star- 
ing them in the face whilst the well-to-do 
were alarmed at the prospect of curtailed in- 
comes demanding a sacrifice of luxuries and 



156 THE COTTON FAMINE 

even some of the adjuncts of comfortable 
existence. Gold win Smith, a friend to the 
North, was justified in describing the state 
of affairs as " The awful peril not only com- 
mercial but social with which the cotton 
famine threatened us and the thrill of alarm 
and horror which upon the dawning of that 
peril ran through the whole land."^ Peace 
would open the Southern ports, cotton would 
again come to England ; and as the great 
body of voting Liberals and Conservatives 
believed that the South was certain in the 
end to gain her independence, the sooner 
that fact was acknowledged by the North, 
the better. This doctrine found able expo- 
nents in Palmerston and Russell, the two 
leading men of the Cabinet and received the 
powerful support of the Times and the Sat- 
urday Review. " The people of the Southern 
States," declared the Times, " may be wrong 
but they are ten millions." ^ Although the 

^ III, 503. " Excepting the Irish famine, the country had seen 
no such distress for a century." Bancroft, Life of Seward, II, 302. 

2 III, 509 et ante. In fact only nine millions, five and one- 
half million whites, three and one half million negroes. 



WILLIAM PI. RUSSELL 157 

Times here slightly exaggerated their num- 
bers it was right in implying that they were a 
formidable people to subdue. On the other 
hand the South attracted sympathy because 
she was the weaker party and was making 
a fight for independence as the Italians had 
done in their War of Liberation of 1859. 

Short-sightedness and the sting of defeat 
were responsible for our government and 
people committing a blunder which tended 
further to alienate the country whose sym- 
pathy was so much desired. England was 
under the reign of the ten-pounders when 
the Tirnes had an almost overpowering influ- 
ence on the governing opinion.^ Though 
Delane had become a partisan of the South, 
his correspondent in America, William H. 
Eussell, differed from him and presented in 
his correspondence a view opposed to that 
of the editor and his leader-writers. Before 
actual fighting began, he made a journey 
through the Southern States, writing graphic 
and impartial letters, in which he told the 

1 IV, 83. 



158 SLAVE AUCTION 

English public in unmistakable terms that 
the cause of the South was the cause of the 
slave power. Detesting slavery as he did, 
he gave an account of a slave auction wit- 
nessed by himself under the shadow of the 
Capitol, in which the Confederate Congress 
was sitting, which was worth reams of jour- 
nalistic argument. A stout young man of 
five and twenty was being knocked down 
for nine hundred and seventy-five dollars. 
"I am neither sentimentalist," Russell wrote, 
*' nor Black Republican, nor negro-worship- 
per, but I confess the sight caused a strange 
thrill through my heart. I tried in vain to 
make myself familiar with the fact that I 
could for the sum of nine hundred and sev- 
enty-five dollars, become as absolutely the 
owner of that mass of blood, bones, sinew, 
flesh and brains as of the horse which stood 
by my side. There was no sophistry which 
could persuade me the man was not a man ; 
he was indeed by no means my brother, but 
assuredly he was a fellow creature."^ With 

* Letter to the Times from Montgomery, May 8, 1861. Ill, 431 n. 



RUSSELL'S ACCOUNT OF BULL RUN 159 

due appreciation, Adams spoke of Russell's 
letters as swaying opinion in favor of the 
North.^ And it was not Delane who called 
this sound and able writer home. We 
drove him away. 

Russell saw the Union forces retreating 
in panic after the battle of Bull Run and 
wrote an interesting and accurate report of 
his experience. If his letter had appeared 
immediately in the Northern newspapers it 
would have been regarded merely as the 
best written account of the affair but a 
month elapsed before the Times, in which it 
was printed, reached America. Then over- 
sensitive ones who had been chewing the 
cud of defeat read into it a sneer at the 
supposed cowardice of the Northern troops 
and imposed this interpretation on the pub- 
lic generally, who henceforth spoke dispar- 
agingly of " Bull Run Russell." Our 
friend's position was made uncomfortable, 
and his enemies were on the alert to seize 
hold of anything that might compromise 

1 June 21. Ill, 43L 



160 OSTRACISM OF RUSSELL 

him. Unearthing a telegram, they accused 
him of having betrayed confidential informa- 
tion from the British Embassy for the pur- 
pose of speculating in Wall street. His 
explanation was entirely satisfactory and, in 
in any case, the aggrieved parties were the 
British Embassy and the Times. Convinced 
that Eussell had been, at the worst, merely 
indiscreet, Delane wished him to remain in 
America, but owing to the unfriendly feel- 
ing which had grown up around him and 
the base use that was made of this unfortu- 
nate incident, he was hampered in getting 
permits to accompany the army. Conclud- 
ing that his usefulness was at an end he 
went home.^ 

The ostracism of Eassell meant a loss to 
our cause in so far as it depended upon a 
correct English appreciation. He early 
recognized Lincoln's parts and would have 
rejoiced in the delineation of his growing 

^ Russell in a private letter to Delane wrote on Oct. 14, 1861, 
" The Americans, with all their faults, are a prodigious fine peo- 
ple, and I cannot help admiring many things about them." — 
Atkins, Life of W. H. Russell, II, 85. 



THE TIMES 161 

power as he grappled with slavery^ and 
moved generals and armies to final trimnph. 
Grateful as was the North for the support 
of the Daily News and Spectator ^ Russell's 
letters in the Times would have been an 
additional and powerful influence. The 
President ought indubitably to have in- 
terfered in Russell's behalf In their first 
interview he spoke of the Times as one 
of the greatest powers in the world. But 
after the Bull Run letter he "looked as 
black as thunder" so Russell wrote, and 
later explained his coldness by the remark, 
" You represent the Times which has shown 
such a bitter enmity to the United States." ^ 
Before the end of 1861 we committed 
a stiil greater blunder in not disavowing 
promptly the act of an " ambitious, self- 
conceited and self-willed " ^ naval captain. 
Wilkes, in command of an American man- 

1 Russell wrote privately Dec. 20, 1861, "I am much exer- 
cised about the Southern people becoming independent and a 
slave power." — Atkins, Life of W. H. Russell, II, 89. 

a Atkins, Life of W. H. Russell, II, 76, 86. 

« Welles 's Diary, I, 87. 



162 CAPTURE OF MASON AND SLIDELL 

of-war stopped the British mail steamship 
Trent in the Bahama channel and took from 
her by force Mason and Slidell, commis- 
sioners from. the Southern Confederacy to 
Great Britain and France, then on their 
way from Havana to Southampton. He 
heeded neither their appeal to the British 
flag for protection nor the protest of a 
Captain of the royal navy in charge of the 
mails. When the news of this incident 
was received in New York (Nov. 16, 1861) 
the country went as wild with jubilant de- 
light as if a great victory had been won in 
the field. I remember going, when a boy 
of thirteen, to a war meeting in Cleveland 
and hearing the thunders of applause which 
greeted a mention of this capture as an im- 
portant success. The Northern people had 
waited and watched so long for some result 
from the immense levies of men and of money 
that no rejoicing could seem excessive when 
they saw two of their hated enemies — the 
one author of the Fugitive Slave Law, the 
other champion of filibustering in the in- 



JUSTIFICATION OF THE ACT 163 

terest of slavery — delivered into their 
hands. The Secretary of the Navy sent 
Wilkes a congratulatory letter. Boston 
gave him a banquet, at which the Governor 
of Massachusetts and the Chief Justice of 
her Supreme Court praised his action. 
The national House of Representatives, on 
the first day of its session thanked him 
'' for his brave, adroit and patriotic con- 
duct." His act was justified by lawyers 
and statesmen. Two public men however 
pointed out the only correct course open 
to the government. Of the captives. Sena- 
tor Sumner said at once " We shall have 
to give them up." ^ Montgomery Blair, 
a member of the cabinet recommended that 
Wilkes be ordered to take Mason and 
Slidell on a war-ship to England and de- 
liver them to the English government.^ 
The President at first perceived clearly the 
national obligation. " I fear these men 
will prove to be white elephants," he said. 
^' We must stick to American principles 

1 Pierce's Sumner, IV, 52. " III, 523. 



164 MASON AND SLIDELL PRISONERS 

concerning tlie rights of neutrals."^ He 
ought to have had more confidence in his 
power of leading pubHc sentiment and trans- 
formed his words into action. For it would 
have been grateful and astute, honorable 
and politic to have delivered up Mason and 
Slidell before the English government made 
a peremptory demand for them. Such ac- 
tion would have lent an irresistible force 
to all our subsequent entreaties to England 
to observe scrupulously her neutrality or 
rather it would have rendered such entreat- 
ies needless, since the fact of standing by 
our own precedents, when they went against 
us, would have won the respect due to a 
far-sighted international deed and insured 
us the friendly neutrality of Great Britain. 
Instead of being at once surrendered, Mason 
and Slidell were confined as prisoners in 
Fort Warren, Boston harbor. But for the 
extreme tension existing generally in North- 
em minds as a result of weary expectation 
and repeated disappointment, the President 

1 Lossing's Civil War, II, 156. 



SENSATION IN ENGLAND 165 

and his advisers would undoubtedly have 
realized, as did the Times that, " the voices 
of these Southern commissioners, sounding 
from their captivity, are a thousand times 
more eloquent in London and Paris than 
they would have been if heard at St. James's 
and the Tuileries." ^ 

The news made a great sensation in Eng- 
land ; the opinion was general that the 
arrest of Mason and Slidell was an outrage 
on the flag. According to English prece- 
dents and abstract legal reasoning from 
them, the act of Wilkes might be justified,^ 
but face to face with the concrete fact in 
1861, anybody could see that no strong 
neutral power with a large merchant marine 
could permit a belligerent to stop and search 
its ships and seize emissaries of the enemy 
who had trusted to the protection of the 
flao:. The Eno^lish Cabinet decided that the 
act of Captain Wilkes was '' a clear violation 



1 Nov. 28, III, 523. 

2 C. F. Adams, Military and Diplomatic Studies, 398 ; Paper 
read before the Mass. Hist. Soc. Nov. 1911 ; Daseut's Delane, II, 36. 



166 ENGLAND'S ATTITUDE 

of thelaw of nations and one for which repara- 
tion must be at once demanded." Earl Eus- 
sell prepared a despatch to Lord Lyons, the 
British minister in Washington, the lan- 
guage of which was softened and made more 
friendly at the suggestion of the Queen and 
Prince Consort, but even as modified, the 
British government's demand was for the 
liberation of Mason and Slidell and " a 
suitable apology for the aggression." ^ As 
there was as that time no cable between 
England and America, the despatch was 
sent to Washington by a Queen's messenger 
and reached the Secretary of State through 
the usual diplomatic channel. The Presi- 
dent and his Cabinet carefully considered 
the demand, saw the justice of it and de- 
livered Mason and Shdell to an English 
steamer. The disavowal of the act was 
accepted as a sufficient apology.^ 

Considering the intense feeling on both 
sides of the Atlantic, each government acted 
moderately and with dignity. In the flush 

1 III, 525. ^ m, 538 et ante. 



ENGLAND'S ATTITUDE 167 

of excitement, American jingoes were con- 
spicuous, talking recklessly of their desire to 
fight the traditional enemy, seeming to ig- 
nore in their boasts the certainty that war 
with Great Britain would mean that we must 
abandon our effort to defeat the South. 
In England during the first explosion, the 
active sympathizers with the South were 
eager to embroil the two countries but a 
large majority wished a peaceful settlement ^ 
and did not contemplate with satisfaction an 
alliance with a slave power. Such was un- 
doubtedly the opinion of nearly all those 
persons to whom the Times was either an 
organ or an oracle, although the editor him- 
self held the opposite view. There is a 
**real, downright, honest desire to avenge 

^ Robert Browning wrote to W. W. Story on Dec. 31, 1861 : 
"I have not heard one man, woman or child express anything but 
dismay at the prospect of being obliged to go to war on any grounds 
with America ; but every one felt there might be an obligation as 
stringent as a slap on the face in public from one's bosom friend." 
Henry James, Life of Story, II, 109. 

On our side, Charles Eliot Norton wrote on the same day to 
George W. Curtis: "Shall we yet have to fight England? With 
all my heart I hope not, — but if need be I am ready." Atlantic 
Monthly, Nov. 1912, 605. 



168 RESULTANT OPINION 

old scores," wrote Delane in a private letter. 
" The whole Army, Navy and Volunteers are 
of one mind and all mad for service in 
America."^ The seizure, our neglect to 
surrender Mason and Slidell at once, our 
popular approval of Wilkes lost us likewise 
the good will of friends. "I agree with 
you," wrote Darwin to Sir Joseph Hooker 
on January 25, 1862, " the present Ameri- 
can row has a very Toryfying influence on 
us all." ^ On the other hand the intensity 
on our side is seen in its survival in James 
Eussell Lowell, who wrote seven years later : 
"It is the Trent that we quarrel about, like 
Percy and Glendower. That was like an 
east wind to our old wound and set it 
atwinge once more. . . . That imperious 
despatch of Lord John's made all those in- 
herited drops of ill-blood as hot as present 
wrongs." ^ 

1 Atkins, Life of W. H. Russell, II, 88. 

2 111,543. 

' Til, 542, see especially note 2. Excellent accounts of the 
Trent affair are in C. F. Adams's Life of Charles Francis Adams 
and in his paper read before the Mass. Historical Society at the 



THE ALABAMA 169 

In international difFerences, the blunders 
are rarely confined to one side. The neglect 
of the British government to detain the war 
steamers Florida and Alahamaj which were 
built in 1862 for the Southern Confederacy, 
were violations of the neutrality which had 
been formally declared. The case of the 
Alabama was the more flagrant of the two. 
The story of her building and escape is a 
long one which may not be related here. I 
will, however, mention the declarations of 
three eminent Englishmen. Sir Robert 
Collier, Queen's Counsel, whose opinion had 
been asked by Adams, our minister, said, 
before the Alabama got away. It is the 
duty of the collector of customs in Liver- 
pool to detain the Alabama. " It appears 
difficult to make out a stronger case of in- 
fringement of the Foreign Enlistment Act, 
which if not enforced on this occasion is 
little better than a dead letter." Chief 



November meeting of 1911 ; and in Chapter XXXIII of Bancroft's 
Life of Seward. See also R. H. Dana's paper read before the 
Mass. Historical Society at the March meeting of 1912. 



170 THE ALABAMA 

Justice Cockburn the English member 
of the Geneva Tribunal, declared,^ It was 
the duty of the Commissioners of Customs, 
to whom as his superiors the Collector 
had referred the matter, "to direct the 
seizure" of the Alabama. Earl Eussell, 
the highest in authority, wrote in after years 
with a candor which does him honor, "I 
ought to have been satisfied with the opinion 
of Sir Kobert Collier and to have given 
orders to detain the Alabama at Birken- 
head." ^ 

The military reverses during the summer 
of 1862 confirmed the majority of English 
voters in their opinion that the North could 
not conquer the South, and this opinion 
was shared by many of our friends. 
" There is an all but unanimous belief that 
you cannot subject the South to the Union," 
wrote Cobden to Sumner. " I feel quite 
convinced that unless cotton comes in con- 
siderable quantities before the end of the 
year, the governments of Europe will be 

1 In 1872. 2 IV, 88 et ante. 



WILL ENGLAND OFFER MEDIATION? 171 

knocking at your door." ^ The cotton 
famine was then at its height^ and Cob- 
den's fears came near realization. Since 
the autumn of 1861, Louis Napoleon had 
been eager for the cooperation of England 
in recognizing the independence of the 
Southern Confederacy and breaking the 
blockade or, if she would not go so far, in 
an offer of mediation ; he wanted cotton 
and moreover desired the backing of the 
South in his Mexican adventure. Palmer- 
ston, in touch with his majority in the 
House and with the voters who elected it, 
wrote to Earl Kussell on September 14, 
1862, " The Federals got a very complete 
smashing " and if Washington or Baltimore 
" fall into the hands of the Confederates " 
as " seems not altogether unlikely " should 
not England and France " address the 
contending parties and recommend an 
agreement upon the basis of separation 1 " 

1 July 11, 1862, IV, 85 n. 

^ To be exact it was at its height during the summer and 
autumn of 1862, IV, 84 n., 363 n. ; Bancroft, Life of Seward, 11, 
302. 



172 GLADSTONE 

Eussell agreed and suggested a meeting of 
the cabinet to consider the matter. Palmer- 
ston, however, as he watched the sequence 
of events, realized that the Northern victory 
of Antietam had a considerable effect on 
the British public; he therefore counselled 
a brief delay.^ Now Gladstone, the third 
member in importance in the Cabinet, came 
to the front. Having been informed by 
Palmerston of his and Eussell's view of the 
course which ought to be taken by the 
English government and having expressed 
his concurrence in it with the added sugges- 
tion that the proceedings be prompt, Glad- 
stone took the public into the government's 
confidence in his celebrated speech in New- 
castle on October 7, and, in the light of his 
own carefully matured opinion, emphasized 
what he thought was the definite conclusion 
of the ministry. " There is no doubt," he 
declared, "that Jefferson Davis and other 
leaders of the South have made an army; 
they are making, it appears, a navy; and 

1 IV, 338, 339. 



MOVEMENT TOWARD MEDIATION 173 

they have made what is more than either 
— they have made a nation. We may 
anticipate with certainty the success of the 
Southern States so far as their separation 
from the North is concerned." ^ The con- 
struction which the country naturally put 
upon this speech was that the government 
had determined on the recognition of the 
Southern Confederacy. If I had entirely 
trusted to this construction, said Adams 
later to Earl Russell, " I should have begun 
to think of packing my carpet-bag and 
trunks."^ And for the moment Gladstone 
seemed indeed to have proclaimed the 
government's policy. Six days later (Octo- 
ber 13), Russell sent to his colleagues a con- 
fidential memorandum, inquiring ''whether 
it is not a duty for Europe to ask both 
parties in the most friendly and conciliatory 
terms to agree to a suspension of arms," 
and appointing October 23 for a Cabinet 
meeting to consider the question. But the 
next day after the despatch of Russell's 

1 IV, 339. » IV, 339, 341. 



174 ENGLAND DECLINED TO MEDIATE 

communication, Sir George Cornewall 
Lewis, the member of the Cabinet ranking 
next in importance to Gladstone, made 
a speech at Palmerston's request, which 
plainly left the inference to be drawn that 
the government had no intention of recog- 
nizing the independence of the Southern 
States.^ It is not clear why Palmerston so 
suddenly changed his mind nor why he 
did not notify Earl Eussell, so as to prevent 
the issuing of the confidential memorandum. 
At all events, the appointed Cabinet meet- 
ing was not held and it was informally 
determined that the existing policy of 
non-intervention should be continued.^ A 
month later the English government de- 
clined to join the Emperor of the French 
in an offer of mediation between the South 
and the North.^ 



* IV, 341 ; Morley's Gladstone, II, 80 ; Adams's Military and 
Diplomatic Studies, 409. 

2 IV, 343 ; Dip. Corr., 223, 225-226 ; Adams's Military and 
Diplomatic Studies, 410 ; Mass. His. Soc. 2d ser. XX, 469 ; The 
Times, Oct. 24, 1862 citing Globe of Oct. 23. 

8 IV, 347. 



FAVORABLE ENGLISH SENTIMENT 175 

It was certainly not Lincoln's preliminary 
proclamation of emancipation which pre- 
vented a change of policy on the part of 
the Palmerston-Russell ministry for the 
governing classes generally regarded this 
pronouncement as calculated to excite ser- 
vile insurrection.^ Far otherwise from the 
ten-pounders, who may have numbered a 
million, opined the five million men who 
did not possess the franchise.^ These, al- 
most to a man, applauded the proclamation 
and admired its author. When it came to 
be fully understood and when the supple- 
mentary edict of January 1, 1863 had es- 
tablished it as a fixed policy, large public 
meetings were held all over England in sup- 
port of emancipation and every mention of 
Lincoln's name was greeted with cheers. 
" God bless and strengthen the North ; give 
victory to their arms ! " prayed Spurgeon to 
his congregation of many thousands. A 
large delegation of anti-slavery people left 

iIV, 343; Adams, Life of C. F. Adams, 291. 
2 John Bright, Speeches, II, 191 ; IV, 358. 



176 LINCOLN 

me, SO Adams wrote, " with hearty shakes 
of the hand that marked the existence of 
active feehng at bottom, the genuine Eng- 
lish heartiness of good will." ^ 

How the common people of England dif- 
fered from the people of means and educa- 
tion in their estimate of Lincoln was a 
striking feature of the situation. An Eng- 
lish friend of William H. Eussell's, who had 
accompanied him in a visit to the army- 
headquarters in Washington, asked, " Why 
did you stand up when that tall fellow in 
the shooting suit came into the room ? " 
"Because it was the President." "The 
President of what?" "Of the United 
States ! " Oh ! come now, you're hum- 
bugging me. Let me have another look 
at him." Another look was followed by 
the exclamation, " I give up the United 
States ! " ^ The Marquis of Hartington saw 
Lincoln a few days after the issue of the 
Proclamation of Emancipation and wrote 
thus to 'his father: "I never saw such a 

1 IV, 351, 354. 2 Atkins, Life of W. H. Russell, II, 83. 



LINCOLN 177 

specimen of a Yankee in my life. I should 
think he was a very well meaning sort of a 
man but, almost every one says, about as 
fit for his position now as a fire shovel."^ 
In a letter of February 1863, Hartington 
shows the contrast between the sentiment 
of his class and that of the common people. 
"I am decidedly very Southern in the 
main," he wrote, *' and from what I see, 
that would not at all suit my constituents. 
How they can be so idiotic as to admire 
Lincoln and his Emancipation Proclamation 
and how they can talk such nonsense as 
they do about emancipation I cannot under- 
stand and I shall have to tell them so." ^ 

In our own country as well Lincoln's 
hold was on the plain people. Not in 
Washington did one find his unvarying ad- 
mirers. His undignified bearing, grotesque- 
ness of speech and manner — still more his 
proneness to jocularity when others were 
depressed — proved severely trying to seri- 

1 Sept. 29, 1862. Holland, Life of the Duke of Devonshire, I, 43. 

2 Ibid, I, 53. 



178 LINCOLN 

ous men who were anxious for the safety of 
the State. There were senators and repre- 
sentatives and at least one member of his 
cabinet who had a profound contempt for 
his supposed abihty and were undisguisedly 
repelled by his daily walk and conversation ; 
but the soldiers and sailors, the operatives 
of New England, the iron workers in Pitts- 
burg and the farmers of the West, who 
knew him by his State papers, letters and 
speeches developed for him a respect and 
affectionate sympathy which never lessened 
but almost constantly grew.^ 

If the North could have had military suc- 
cess early in 1863, the uprising of the Eng- 
lish common people in her favor would have 
settled the policy of the English government, 
but in the actual sequence of events, the dep- 

1 IV, 210. " Homely, honest, ungainly Lincoln," wrote Asa 
Gray to Darwin on Feb. 16, 1864, " is the representative man of 
the country." IV, 461. There was a similar development of 
opinion in England. On Nov. 20, 1863, John Bright wrote to 
Sumner : " It is remarkable that in this country all parties have 
a high respect for Lincoln — so much does a real integrity gain 
upon the minds of all men." Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings XL VI, 
127. 



THE IRONCLAD RAMS 179 

redations of tlie Alabama, almost sweeping 
our flag from the seas, together with the con- 
struction of three more war-ships at Liver- 
pool and Birkenhead, intended for Confed- 
erate cruisers, brought the two countries to 
the brink of war. In a correspondence with 
Earl Russell that was not wholly free from 
acerbity, Adams persistently urged upon the 
English government its responsibility for the 
destruction caused by the Alabama. Whilst 
Eussell on behalf of his government dis- 
claimed all responsibility, he nevertheless be- 
lieved that he had been tricked in the affair 
of the vessel's escape ; and his action in. 
1863 was the action of a friendly neutral. 
He stopped the gunboat Alexandra which 
was intended for the Southern Confederacy. 
Then peace or war depended upon the seiz- 
ure of two ironclad rams building at Birk- 
enhead, which, if suffered to escape as did 
the Alabama, might break the blockade, 
ascend the Potomac, render Washington 
uninhabitable and lay Philadelphia under 
contribution. The Confederate agent was 



180 CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS 

astute and made an adroit effort to conceal 
the real ownership.^ The deceitful transfer 
of the vessels and the judicial construction 
of the statute in the case of the Alexandra ^ 
hedged Earl Russell about with difficulties, 
but quickened by an honest purpose, he 
perceived, through the meshes of intrigue, 
that the ironclad rams were intended for 
the Southern Confederacy and directed that 
they be detained. Eventually they were 
purchased by the British Admiralty.^ 

We were fortunate in our minister to Eng- 
land, Charles Francis Adams, whose diplo- 
matic course was almost faultless. He won 
the respect and liking of Lord Eussell and 
came to be highly esteemed in London so- 
ciety. After Russell in the affair of the 



* He had sold the rams to a French firm who had engaged 
themselves to resell them to him when they should get beyond 
British jurisdiction. 

2 The Lord Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer decided 
that the government had no right to seize the gunboat. 

8 IV, 384 et ante. Adams, Life of Charles F. Adams, 315 ; Ban- 
croft, Life of Seward, II, 303, 314, p. 383 et seq. Stopping these iron- 
clads " is a question of life or death." Assistant Secretary of the 
Navy Fox, Life of J. M. Forbes, n, 23. 



ENGLAND — EMPEROR OF THE FRENCH 181 

Alexandra had determined on a friendly 
neutrality, the victories of Gettysburg and 
Vicksburg came to strengthen his hand in 
the seizure of the ironclad rams. Thence- 
forward there was no danger of foreign in- 
tervention in our conflict. 

If, in reviewing the attitude of foreign 
powers, the policy of the Emperor of the 
French be contrasted with that of the gov- 
ernment of Great Britain the latter appears 
to border on friendliness. England indeed 
was the insurmountable obstacle to the rec- 
ognition of the Southern Confederacy by 
France and other European nations.^ 

1 IV, 388. In September 1864, Benjamin the Secretary of State 
of the Southern Confederacy, wrote : " The English government 
has scarcely disguised its hostility. From the commencement of 
the struggle it has professed a newly invented neutrality which it 
had frankly defined as meaning a course of conduct more favorable 
to the stronger belligerents." Bancroft presenting a careful North- 
ern view makes this comment : " The offence of the British govern- 
ment was that it did not use due diligence to prevent the departure 
of the Confederate ships or to detain them when they came within 
colonial ports. The attitude of the French government was very 
different. . . . Napoleon suggested to Slidell (the Confederate 
envoy) that the Confederacy might build war-ships in France 
if 'built as for the Italian government.'" Life of Seward, II, 
393, 394. 



182 GRANT 

After Gettysburg and Vicksburg, the 
South ought to have given up the contest 
and many of her men were of that opinion. 
She could have made an honorable peace, 
coming back into the Union, deprived in- 
deed of slavery but receiving compensation 
for the slaves ^ and retaining the home rule 
of her State legislatures. 

The North had developed a great general 
in Grant who was ably supported by Sher- 
man, Sheridan, and Thomas, while the 
South had suffered the irreparable loss of 
Stonewall Jackson. With superior re- 
sources, with armies larger than those of the 

1 On Feb. 5, 1865, sixty-three days before Lee's surrender, 
Lincoln recommended that Congress empower the President to 
pay to the eleven States of the Southern Confederacy, then in 
arms against the Union, and to the five slave States, remaining in 
the Union, f 400,000,000 in six per cent government bonds as com- 
pensation for their slaves, provided that all resistance to the na- 
tional authority should cease on April 1st. One half should then 
be paid and the other half when the Thirteenth Amendment 
abolishing slavery should become valid law. The Cabinet disap- 
proved unanimously of the President's project and it was not sub- 
mitted to Congress. V, 82. It is hardly likely that Congress 
would have passed such a bill, as the Southern Confederacy was 
then tottering. But directly after Gettysburg and Vicksburg, the 
Cabinet and Congress would undoubtedly have been glad at the 
cessation of the war, if the Union could have been restored and 
slavery abolished on the basis of Lincoln's offer. 



LINCOLN 183 

South, better equipped and supplied and as 
well disciplined ; with generals equal in 
ability, the North was certain to win in the 
end, provided she would with persistency 
and patience make the necessary sacrifice of 
men and money. Herein Lincoln showed 
his power for it was he who held the North 
to its labors. History confirms the con- 
temporaneous impression of John Hay who 
at twenty-five, the President's private sec- 
retary residing in the White House, wrote 
of Lincoln in his affectionate Western man- 
ner : " The old man sits here and wields 
like a backwoods Jupiter the bolts of war 
and the machinery of government with a 
hand equally steady and equally firm."^ 

1 Private letter to his friend and associate, Nicolay, of Sept. 11, 
1863. On Aug. 7, Hay wrote: "The Tycoon [Lincoln] is in 
fine whack. He is managing this war, the draft, foreign relations, 
and planning a reconstruction of the union all at once. I never 
knew vrith what tyrannous authority he rules the Cabinet till now. 
The most important things he decides and there is no cavil. I am 
growing more and more firmly convinced that the good of the 
country absolutely demands that he should be kept where he is 
till this thing is oVer. There is no man in the country so wise, so 
gentle and so firm. I believe the hand of God placed him where 
he is." Letters of John Hay, I, 90, 102. 



184 LINCOLN 

Exercising more authority than any Enghsh- 
man since Cromwell ^ and achieving success 
sufficiently noteworthy to overshadow his 
many mistakes, the President had gained 
the support not only of the plain people but 
also of the business men and of a consider- 
able portion of the independent thought of 
the country. He now received in striking 
unanimity, the approval of farmers, small 
shop-keepers, salesmen, clerks, mechanics, 
and men who stood intellectually for lofty 
aspirations. *' History," wrote James Eus- 
sell Lowell in 1864, *'will rank Lincoln 
among the most prudent of statesmen and 
the most successful of rulers. If we wish to 
appreciate him we have only to conceive 
the inevitable chaos in which we should 
now be weltering had a weak man or an 
unwise one been chosen in his stead." ^ 

^ James Bryce's opinion, IV, 234. 

2 IV, 461. The development of faith in Lincoln, shown in 
Charles Eliot Norton's letters to George W. Curtis, is interesting. 
On Aug. 24, 1861, he wrote : " If another reverse [after Bull Run] 
were to come and they [Cameron, Welles, Smith, members of 
Lincoln's Cabinet] still there, the whole Cabinet would have to 
go ; — and then let Mr. Lincoln himself look out for a Committee 



GRANT 185 

The brave and high-spirited people of the 
South were still determined on resistance ; 
so the war went on, lasting nearly two 
years after Gettysburg and Vicksburg. 

In the autumn of 1863 Grant won an- 
other important victory in the West. The 
President, Congress and the people were 
now of one mind regarding the great com- 
mander and the President placed him in 
command of the armies of the United States. 

of Safety." Dec. 5, 1861 : " We are very serious over the Presi- 
dent's message. We think it very poor in style, manner and 
thought — very wanting in pith, and exhibiting a mournful de- 
ficiency of strong feeling and wise forecast in the President." 
March 8, 1862 : " Lincoln's style is worse than ever ; and though 
a bad style is not always a mark of bad thought, it is at least a 
proof that thought is not as clear as it ought to be." Nov. 12, 
1862 : " The worst of the ifs is the one concerning Lincoln. I am 
very much afraid that a domestic cat will not answer when one 
wants a Bengal tiger." Sept. 3, 1863 : Norton spoke of " the ex- 
traordinary excellence of the President's letter [letter of Aug. 26. 
Complete Works, II, 397J. He rises with each new effort and his 
letters are successive victories." Dec. 10, 1863 : " Once more we 
may rejoice that Abraham Lincoln is President. How wise and 
how admirably tuned is his Proclamation [of Dec. 8, 1863 in con- 
nection with his annual message of the same date. Complete 
Works, II, 442]. As a state paper its naivete is wonderful. Lin- 
coln will introduce a new style into state papers; he will make 
them sincere and his honesty will compel even politicians to like 
virtue. I conceive his character to be on the whole the great net 
gain from the war." Adantlc Monthly, November 1912, 603-612. 



186 GRANT — LEE 

Grant saw tliat his place was with the 
Army of the Potomac ; that he must pit 
himself against the redoubtable Eobert E. 
Lee. In May 1864, he began his campaign 
by hurling his troops against the veterans 
of the Army of Northern Virginia. After 
two days of fighting, in which he had the 
worse of the encounter, he gave the order 
for a night march. His army aware only 
of a great slaughter started without know- 
ing whether it had been beaten, and when 
the parting of the ways was reached, the 
question uppermost in all minds was. Would 
the orders be to turn northward 1 But the 
command. File right, set the men's faces 
towards Eichmond. The soldiers sang and 
stepped forward with elastic tread. As 
Grant rode past in the darkness they recog- 
nized him and burst into cheers, swung 
their hats, clapped their hands and threw 
up their arms greeting their general as a 
comrade and letting him witness their joy 
at learning that he was leading them on- 
ward to Richmond instead of ordering them 



LEE — GRANT 187 

to fall back to the camp which they had 
just abandoned.^ 

Lee found in Grant a very different antag- 
onist from those whom he had so easily over- 
come. During the battle of the second day 
his intense anxiety led him to spur forward 
his horse and follow a Texas brigade that 
had been ordered to charge home the enemy. 
He was recognized and from the entire Ime 
came the cry " Go back, General Lee ! go 
back! "2 

For five and forty days Grant prosecuted 
his campaign of attrition and his loss was 
enormous. He was bitterly disappointed 
at the result, as he had failed to crush or 
capture Lee's army whose power of effective 
resistance still remained. His own army 
was shattered and worn out ; what remained 
of it needed rest. To those soldiers must 
have occurred the thought which ran so 
many times through the Army of the 
Potomac : " It is no use. No matter who 
is given us, we can't whip Bobby Lee." 

UV, 440-448. 21V, 441. 



188 GRANT'S DISAPPOINTMENT 

Eeenforcements and reorganization were 
indispensable preliminaries to any fur- 
ther offensive operations on a large scale. 
Grant did not assume a vigorous offensive 
from June 18, 1864 until the spring of 1865.^ 
But his strong will and native hardihood 
overcame his first disappointment whilst a 
stolid countenance masked any apprehension 
he may have had for the future. At the 
end of this campaign he transferred his army 
to a point south of Richmond,^ uncovering 
Washington, which the Confederates threat- 
ened and might have entered, but for the 
procrastination of Early, the general in 
command. 

In July and August 1864 the North 
passed through its final period of dejection 
and misgiving.^ Lincoln, standing for 
reelection feared defeat as a consequence of 
the failure of Grant's campaign. But a 

irV, 440, 488. 

2 This movement, which began June 12, 1864 and ended June 16, 
was very successfully accomplished. IV, 488. 

8 Welles made this entry Aug. 17, " I am sadly oppressed with 
the aspect of things." Diary, II, 109. 



FARRAGUT — SHERMAN 189 

change of fortune was at hand. Farragut 
defeated the Confederate fleet and became 
master of Mobile Bay, closing an important 
port available for blockade running. Here 
was another link completed in the chain 
that the navy had been steadily forging to 
obstruct the intercourse of the Confederacy 
with the outside maritime world. Sherman, 
after a four months' campaign, in which he 
had fought his way south inch by inch, took 
Atlanta.^ If Lincoln's reelection had ever 
been doubtful, these and other victories 
made it certain. In November he was 
chosen triumphantly for a second presiden- 
tial term ; by their votes the Northern people 
declared that the war must be prosecuted 
until slavery was destroyed and the Union 
restored ; and that, to use Lincoln's humor- 
ous illustration, "they concluded that it is 
not best to swop horses while crossing the 

1 IV, 523, 524. Charles Eliot Norton wrote to George W. Curtis 
under date of Sept. 6, 1864 : " And now let us rejoice together over 
the great good news. It lifts the cloud and the prospect clears. 
We really see now the beginning of the end." Atlantic Monthly, 
November 1912, 613. 



190 LEE — GRANT 

stream." ^ Before the end of the year, Sher- 
man cut the Southern Confederacy in twain 
by his famous march to the sea, presenting 
the city of Savannah to Lincoln as a Christ- 
mas gift.^ 

On March 29, 1865, Grant began his final 
movement against Lee's army. He com- 
pelled the evacuation of Eichmond and, 
following in eager pursuit these veterans, 
led by their great and beloved general, 
hemmed them in and forced their surrender 
at Appomattox. In the history of most 
nations, isolated events are to be found 
which reveal the principal actors rising sud- 
denly above the common clay to assume 
heroic size and a sublime demeanor. Such 
an event was the meeting between Lee and 
Grant. The one was grieved to the heart ; 

1 Lincoln, Complete Works, II, 532, has "river" but a West- 
erner would surely have said, stream. Appleton's Ann. Cyc, 1864, 
p. 789 has it, "I am reminded ... of a story of an old Dutch 
farmer, who remarked to a companion once that ' it was not best to 
swop horses when crossing streams.' " Samuel R. Gardiner quotes 
it " it is not well to swop horses in the middle of a stream." Crom- 
well's Place in History, 48. My own recollection of the saying is, 
" it is not well to swop horses while crossing a stream." 

2 IV, 538; V, 29. 



GRANT — LEE — SHERMAN 191 

the other showed no exultation. As Grant 
wrote twenty years later when his own 
death was near, " I felt like anything rather 
than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who 
had fought so long and valiantly." Grant 
was magnanimous, Lee was appreciative. 
Generous terms were offered and accepted. 
When the Union soldiers heard of the sur- 
render they began firing salutes. Grant 
ordered them stopped, saying, " The war 
is over; the rebels are our countrymen 



again." ^ 



Meanwhile Sherman had marched north- 
ward from Savannah through the Confed- 
eracy and, coming up with Johnston 
commandhig the other great Southern 
army, compelled his surrender. This ended 
the war.^ 

Between the surrender of Lee and the 
surrender of Johnston, our country suffered 
the greatest disaster in its history. Lincoln 
was assassinated. Of this cruel blow Walt 
Whitman sang, 

1 V, 129 et ante. 2 y, 166. 



192 ASSASSINATION OF LINCOLN 

"Our fearful trip is done, 
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought 

is won, 
But our Captain lies fallen cold and dead."* 

Although exasperated by the assassina- 
tion of Lincoln the North was at the same 

1 V, 140. Whitman added : 
"O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells ; 
Rise up — for you the flag is flung — for you the bugle trills, 
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths — for you the shores a-crowding, 
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning." 

Leaves of Grass. 

Tom Taylor wrote in Punch : 

*' Tou lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier, 
Tou, who with mocking pencil wont to trace, 
Broad for the self-complacent British sneer, 
His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face, 

Beside this corpse, that bears for winding-sheet 
The Stars and Stripes he lived to rear anew, 

Between the mourners at his head and feet. 
Say, scurril jester, is there room for youf 

Yes, he had lived to shame me from my sneer— 
To lame my pencil, and confute my pen — 

To make me own this hind of princes peer, 
This rail-splitter a true-born king of men." 
Punch, May 6, 1865. See Layard, Shirley Brooks of Punch, 245. 

The assassination of Lincoln took place on April 14, 1865. 
Under date of April 29, John Bright wrote to Sumner : " For 
fifty years I think no other event has created such a sensation in 
this country as the great crime which has robbed you of your Pres- 
ident. The whole people positively mourn and it would seem as if 
again we were one nation with you, so universal the grief and the 
horror at the deed of which Washington has been the scene." — 
Pierce's Sumner, IV, 240. 



ROBERT E. LEE 193 

time inspired by the grandeur of Grant's con- 
duct at Appomattox. Nobody was hanged 
for a pohtical crime, no land of the van- 
quished Confederates confiscated.^ 

Our civil war lasted four years. And a 
question often asked is, How was the South 
able to resist so long? No student of the 
subject will be inclined to refer their power 
of protracted resistance to a single cause ; 
nevertheless any one who may live the time 
over again will find it difficult to escape the 
conviction that the paramount factor was 
Eobert E. Lee.^ His ability and character 
made him the head and center of the South- 
ern cause. When a Southerner had con- 
scientious misgivings, he was reassured by 
the reflection that any cause winning the 
devotion of Lee must be just and holy ; 
when he doubted if ultimate success were 

^ " Since their (the Americans') most noble closing of the Civil 
War, I have looked to them as the hope of our civilization." — 
George Meredith to W. M. Fullerton, Nov. 15, 1886. Scrihners 
Magazine, Sept., 1912, 286. 

2 Under date of IMay 16, 1865 John Bright vrrote to Sumner 
" For the last two years Lee has been the soul of the whole rebel 
military action." — Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, XLVI, 139- 
o 



194 ROBERT E. LEE 

possible he remembered that Lee was lead- 
ing and Lee could not fail. Doubt and 
despair were always removed until at Ap- 
pomattox they penetrated the soul of Lee 
himself, when he said, " There is nothing 
left me but to go and see General Grant 
and I would rather die a thousand deaths." ^ 
After the surrender,^ Lee said to his soldiers 
in a suppressed and tremulous voice, '' We 
have fought through the war together. I 
have done the best I could for you. My 
heart is too full to say more." ^ 

Another and more frequently recurring 
question is, How was the North able to 
overcome the South'? The opinion of an 
intelligent foreign country often foreshadows 
the issue of civil strife. Yet in England 
friend, foe and neutral alike believed that 
the South was not to be subdued. At the 
North as at the South one man was the pre- 
dominant factor in the war. It is true that 
some find the determining element of victory 
in Grant and Sherman who prevailed over 

1 V, 125. 2 April 9, 1865. » V, 129. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 195 

Lee and Johnston ; others find it in the 
blockade. Yet the affair of supreme diffi- 
culty was to get troops for Grant and Sher- 
man, ships and sailors for the blockade. 
When a democracy goes to war men and 
money are forthcoming only by voluntary 
effort ; if the people lack confidence in the 
leader their effort is likely to come to 
naught. Lincoln possessed this confidence. 
He was able to give his generals the sup- 
port they required as well as to supply the 
means for the blockade ; he was unquestion- 
ably the one man that the North coxild not 
spare.^ 

1 " The best aspect of an age of controversy must be sought in 
the lives of the best men, whose honesty carries conviction to the 
understanding, whilst their zeal kindles the zeal of the many. A 
study of the lives of such men will lead to the conclusion that, in 
spite of internecine hostility in act, the real and true leaders had 
far more in common than they knew of." Stubbs, Constitutional 
History of England, III, 639. 



INDEX 



Abolitionists, influence, 13. 

Adams, C. F., on grievances of 
South, 80 ; on antislavery 
in England, 176; and ex- 
pected British intervention, 
173 ; on responsibility for 
Alabama depredations, 179 ; 
faultless course as minister, 
180. 

Alabama, building and escape, 
169 ; depredations, 179. 

Alabama, secession, 77. 

Alexandra, seized, 179. 

American Civil War, slavery as 
cause, 2-7, 76, 80, 136, 153; 
and tariff question, 3, 82, 
154 ; secession of South Caro- 
lina, 65-68 ; attempts at 
compromise, 68-76 ; reason 
for inevitableness, 76 ; prog- 
ress and popularity of seces- 
sion, its constitutional basis, 
77-80 ; political inexpedi- 
ency of secession, 80, 87 ; 
formation of Confederacy, 
81-84, 110; choice of North, 
peaceable separation or war, 
87-89 ; Lincoln's policy to 
hold Southern posts, 89 ; 
outbreak, attack on Fort 
Sumter, 90; Southern ag- 
gression, 91 ; call for militia, 
uprising of the North, 91- 
93 ; Southern enthusiasm, 
93 ; sectional advantages and 
disadvantages, 95-99, 135?;. ; 
Lincoln's conception of task, 
99-101 ; Lee as paramount 
Southern factor, 101-104, 193 ; 
first Bull Run, 105-107; 



McClellan as commander, 
107-109 ; Fort Donelson, 109, 
110; naval operations. 111, 
112, 189; Shiloh, 112; Pen- 
insular campaign, 113-117; 
periods of Northern despond- 
ency, 116, 118n., 140, 188; 
Lincoln's perseverance and 
power, 116, 142, 183, 184; 
second Bull Run, 117, 118; 
Antietam, 119-121; slavery 
and emancipation during, 
121-138, 182; Fredericks- 
burg, 138, 139, 142 ; attitude 
of Napoleon, 141, 171, 181 ; 
Chancellorsville, 143-145 ; 
Gettysburg, 145-148 ; Vicks- 
burg, 148-151 ; Gettysburg 
and Vicksburg as decisive, 
151, 181 ; British relations, 
151-181 ; development of 
Union generals, 182 ; out- 
come dependent on Northern 
persistence, Lincoln's con- 
trol, 183 ; Grant General-in- 
Chief, 185; Virginia cam- 
paign of 1864, 186-188; re- 
election of Lincoln, 188-190 ; 
Sherman's campaigns, 189- 
191 ; Richmond and Ap- 
pomattox, 190; no proscrip- 
tions, 193 ; Lincoln as nec- 
essary factor in Northern 
success, 194. 

Antietam campaign, 119-121 ; 
and Emancipation Procla- 
mation, 127, 138. 

Appomattox campaign, great- 
ness of Grant and Lee, 
190. 



197 



198 



INDEX 



Argyll, Duke of, sympathy for 
the North, 155. 

Army, Confederate, conscrip- 
tion, 110. 

Army, Union, first calls, 91, 
lOOn. ; regulars, 97, lOOn. ; 
character of soldiers, 108, 
113; caU of 1862, 116; 
negro troops, 136 ; conscrip- 
tion, 142. 

Army of Northern Virginia. 
See Lee. 

Army of the Potomac, Mc- 
Clellan's organization and 
leadership, 107, 113; Penin- 
sular campaign, 114—116; 
popularity of McClellan, 119 ; 
Antietam, 119-121 ; Mc- 
Clellan removed, 138 ; Burn- 
side and Fredericksburg, 139, 
140, 142 ; Hooker and Chan- 
cellorsville, 143-145; Meade 
and Gettysburg, 145-148 ; 
Grant and Virginia cam- 
paign of 1864, 186-188 ; Ap- 
pomattox, 190. 

Atlanta campaign, 189. 

Bancroft, Frederic, on South 
and cotton, 152n. ; on Euro- 
pean attitude during war, 
181». 

Beecher, H. W., i'Beecher's 
bibles," 34. 

''Beecher's bibles," 34. 

Belligerency, recognition of 
Confederate, 152, 153. 

Benjamin, J. P., on British 
attitude, 181. 

Blair, Montgomery, and Trent 
affair, 163. 

Blockade, 152, 189, 195. 

Border States, and secession, 95 ; 
reject gradual compensated 
emancipation, 122-125, 134n. 

Bright, John, sympathy for 
the North, 155; on Lincoln, 



178n. ; on assassination of 
Lincoln, 192n. ; on Lee, 193n. 

Brooks, Preston, assault on 
Sumner, 37. 

Brown, John, in Kansas, Pot- 
tawatomie massacre, 35 ; Har- 
per's Ferry raid, 56-59. 

Browning, Robert, on possible 
war with North, 167n. 

Buchanan, James, election as 
President, 39, 40; and 
Lecompton Constitution, 44. 

Buford's battalion in Kansas, 
33. 

Bull Run, first campaign, 105, 
106 ; effect on sections, 106 ; 
second campaign, 118; W. H. 
Russell's account of first, 159. 

Burnside, A. E., commands 
army, Fredericksburg, 139, 
140, 142 ; relieved, 143. 

Butler, A. P., Sumner's at- 
tack on, 36. 

Cairnes, J. E., on slavery and 
Civil War, 2. 

Calhoun, J. C, on slavery in 
territories, 7 ; doctrines and 
secession, 78. 

California, free territory under 
Mexican law, 7 ; character of 
settlers, 8 ; free-state Con- 
stitution, 9 ; admission and 
sectional equilibrium in Sen- 
ate, 11 ; admission as free 
State, 16. 

Carlyle, Thomas, on battles, 
104 ; on Frederick's study of 
opponent, 117. 

Carolina campaign of Sherman, 
191. 

Chancellorsville, battle, 144. 

Chase, S. P., on passage of 
Kansas-Nebraska Bill, 26 ; 
on Fort Donelson, 109 ; on 
Emancipation Proclamation, 
128n. 



INDEX 



199 



Ci\'il War. See American Civil 
War. 

Clay, Honry, Compromise of 
1850, 16. 

Cobden, Richard, sympathy for 
tho North, 155 ; on belief in 
Southern success, 170. 

Cockburn, Alexander, on Ala- 
bama, 170. 

CoUier, Sir Robert, on building 
of Alabama, 169. 

Compromise, attempts in 1860- 
1861, Senate committee, 69; 
Crittenden, 70 ; Northern 
pressure, 71 ; Lincoln's atti- 
tude, 72-74 ; failure of Senate 
committee, 74 ; popular vote 
on, suggested, 75 ; Peace 
Congress, 75. 

Compromise of 1850, causes, 
7-16; Southern threats, 16; 
provisions, 16-18; fairness, 21. 

Confederate States, formation. 
Constitution, 81-83 ; slavery 
as corner-stone, 84—87 ; capi- 
tal, 95 ; permanent organiza- 
tion, 110; conscription, 110; 
England and recognition, 
170-174, 181. 

Congress, Compromise of 1850, 
16-18, 21 ; Kansas-Nebraska 
Bill, 23-26; and Kansas, 
38, 44; complexion (1855), 
30; (1857), 40; Brooks's at- 
tack on Sumner, 36 ; Speaker 
contest (1859), 59; ex- 
citement and altercations, 
60 ; attempts at compromise 
(1860-1861), 68-76; amend- 
ment to guarantee slavery in 
states, 88 ; legalizes Lincoln's 
arbitrary measures, lOOn. ; 
abolishes slavery in terri- 
tories and District of Colum- 
bia, 122 ; and gradual com- 
pensated emancipation, 123, 
138; and Lincoln, 141. 



Conscription, in Confederate 
army, 110; in Union army, 
142. 

Cotton, cotton gin and growth 
of slavery sentiment, 12 ; as 
expected factor in recogni- 
tion of Confederacy, 152 ; 
England and famine, 155. 

Crittenden, J. J., and com- 
promise, 70, 75. 

Crittenden Compromise, 70. 

Cuba, desire of South to annex, 
55. 

Curtin, A. G., and Lee's inva- 
sion, 146?t. 

Darwin, Charles, on Peninsu- 
lar campaign, 116; sym- 
pathy for the North, 154 ; on 
Trent affair, 168. 

Davis, Jefferson, demands pro- 
tection of slavery in terri- 
tories, 55 ; threatens seces- 
sion (1860), 61 ; and com- 
promise, 69, 70 ; deprecates 
secession movement, 81 ; 
elected President of Confed- 
eracy, 81 ; and attack on 
Sumter, 91 ; military train- 
ing, 101 ; inaugurated Presi- 
dent, 110; and Vicksburg, 
151. 

Delane, J. T., sympathy for 
tho South, 157, 160, 167. 

Democratic party, election of 
1854, 30 ; of 1856, 38-40 ; con- 
ventions and spht (1860), 61. 

De Quincey, Thomas, on Cali- 
fornia, 9. 

Dicey, Edward, on Union army, 
113. 

District of Columbia, slavery 
abolished, 122. 

Donelson, Fort, capture, popu- 
lar effect, 109, 110. 

Douglas, S. A., character, 22; 
Kansas-Nebraska Bill, 23-26 ; 



200 



INDEX 



Northern condemnation, 26 ; 
effect of bill on career, 
27 ; denounces Lecompton 
scheme, 44; restored popu- 
larity, 45, 51 ; and Re- 
publicans (1858), 46; can- 
didacy for reelection to Sen- 
ate, reply to Lincoln's key- 
note speech, 50 ; as speaker, 
51, 52 ; joint debates with 
Lincoln, 52-55 ; nomination 
for President, 61 ; and com- 
promise (1861), 69, 70, 75. 
Dred Scott opinion, 41-43. 

Early, J. A., raid on Washing- 
ton, 188. 

Elections (1854), 30; (1856), 
38-40; (1860), 61-64; (1862), 
131 ; (1864), 188-190. 

Emancipation, abolition of 
slavery in territories and 
District of Columbia, 122 ; 
offer of gradual compensated, 
to border States, rejected, 
122-125 ; development and 
issue of preliminary Procla- 
mation, 125-128; reception, 
final Proclamation, 128?i., 
131-133 ; Lincoln on con- 
stitutional question of the 
Proclamation, 133n.-135n. ; 
slaves and Proclamation, 
134-136 ; Lincoln's policy 
of gradual compensated, for 
whole South, 13&-138, 182n. ; 
reception of Proclamation in 
England, 175. 

Emerson, R. W., on John 
Brown, 58 ; on uprising of 
the North, 93. 

Emigrant Aid Company in 
Kansas, 32. 

Fair Oaks, battle, 115. 
Farragut, D. G., New Orleans, 
112; Mobile Bay, 189. 



Florida, English built Confeder- 
ate cruiser, 169. 
Porster, W. E., on slavery and 

Civil War, 3 ; sympathy for 

the North, 155. 
France. See Napoleon. 
Frederick the Great, study of 

adversary, 117. 
Fredericksburg, battle, 139, 140, 

142; effect on the North, 

140. 
Free-Soil party, 27. 
Fremont, J. C., candidacy for 

President, 89. 
Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, 17 ; 

purpose, 18 ; result on South, 

19. 

Gardiner, S. R., on inevitable- 
ness of English Civil War, 76. 

Garrison, W. L., antislavery 
crusade, its effect, 13. 

Georgia, secession, 77. 

Gettysburg campaign, 145- 
148 ; as decisive event, 151, 
181. 

Gladstone, W. E., speech on 
Confederacy, 172. 

Grady, Henry, on slaves during 
Civil War, 135n. 

Grant, U. S., Donelson, "Un- 
conditional Surrender," 109; 
Shiloh, question of intemper- 
ance, 112 ; Lincoln's faith in, 
113; Vicksburg, 148-151; 
General-in-Chief, 185; Vir- 
ginia campaign, 186-188 ; 
Richmond and Appomattox, 
greatness at surrender of 
Lee, 190. 

Gray, Asa, on Lincoln, 178 w. 

Great Britain and Morrill tar- 
iff, 82, 154 ; and cotton, 152, 
155; proclamation of neutral- 
ity, 152 ; recognition of slav- 
ery as issue of war, 153 ; 
Southern sympathy of upper 



INDEX 



201 



classes, 154 ; beliof in success 
of South, 155, 170; blunder 
of North in ostracising W. H. 
Russell, 157-161; Trent af- 
fair, 161-168 ; building and 
escape of Alabama, 169, 179 ; 
policy of intervention (1862), 
abrupt change, 171-175 ; and 
Emancipation Proclamation, 
175 ; opinion of Lincoln, 
176, 178ri. ; construction of 
Confederate rams, 179, 180 ; 
Adams as minister to, 180 ; 
as obstacle to European rec- 
ognition of Confederacy, 181. 

Greeley, Horace, influence, 30 ; 
and Douglas (1858), 46; 
and secession, 87; "Prayer 
of Twenty Millions," 126; 
favors foreign mediation, 140. 

Grow, Galusha, on excitement 
in Congress (1859), 61. 

Halleck, H. W., as General-in- 
Chief, 117. 

Hartington, Marquis of, on Lin- 
coln, 176. 

Hay, John, on Emancipation 
Proclamation, 128n. ; on Lin- 
coln's supreme control, 183. 

Holmes, O. W., on Mill's 
article on Civil War, 2n. ; on 
captiu-e of Fort Donelson, 1 10. 

Hooker, Joseph, mistaken ap- 
pointment to command army, 
143 ; Chancellorsvllle, 144 ; 
relieved, 146. 

HoweUs, W. D., on Artemus 
Ward, 129. 

Hughes, T. E., sympathy for 
the North, 155. 

Hugo, Victor, on John Brown, 
58. 

Jackson, T. J., at first Bull 
Run, "Stonewall," 105; 
Valley campaign, 114; in 



Seven Days', 115; second 
Bull Run, 118; Chancellors- 
vllle, death, 14.5 ; loss to 
Confederate army, 182. 

Jefferson, Thomas, on Missouri 
controversy, 22. 

Johnston, J. E., Peninsular 
campaign, 114, 11.5; sur- 
renders to Sherman, 191. 

Kansas, act to organize as 
territory under popular 
sovereignty, 23-26 ; ex- 
pected to be a slave state, 
31 ; free-state and proslavery 
immigration, 31-34 ; pro- 
slavery and free-state organ- 
izations, 32 ; civil war, 35 ; 
Congress and, 38 ; Lecomp- 
ton Constitution and Eng- 
lish Bill, 43-45 ; rejects 
English Bill and slavery, 45. 

Kansas-Nebraska Bill, repeal 
of Missouri Compromise, 23 
attitude of Douglas, 24 
popular sovereignty, 25 
passage, 25 ; Northern con- 
demnation, 26, 30 ; as issue 
in election of 1854, 30; 
Southern support, 31 ; re- 
sulting war in Kansas, 31-36, 
43-45. 

Kentucky, does not secede, 95. 

Know-nothing movement, 29. 

Lecompton Constitution, 43- 
45. 

Lee, R. E., and John Brown's 
raid, 57 ; on forcible preserva- 
tion of union, 88 ; declines 
Union command, joins Con- 
federacy, 101-103 ; charac- 
ter, 103 ; commands Army of 
Northern Virginia, Seven 
Days' campaign, 115 ; unhin- 
dered command, 117; study 
of adversaries, 117; second 



202 



INDEX 



Bull Run, 118; Antietam, 
119-121 ; on McClellan, 
139n. ; Fredericksburg, 139; 
Chancellorsville, 144 ; Gettys- 
burg campaign, 145-148 ; 
overconfidence, 146 ; Virginia 
campaign of 1864, 186-188; 
affection of soldiers, 187 ; 
Richmond and Appomat- 
tox, greatness at suirender, 
190 ; as paramount factor 
on Southern side, 193. 

Lewis, Sir G. C, and media- 
tion, 174. 

Lincoln, Abraham, on Dred 
Scott decision, 42 ; training 
and character, 46-49 ; can- 
didacy for Senate (1858), 
house - divided - against - itself 
speech, 49-51 ; joint debates 
with Douglas, 52-55; and 
speaker, 53 ; elected Presi- 
dent, 63, 64 ; and efforts at 
compromise, 72-74 ; on geo- 
graphical union, 88 ; on forci- 
ble preservation of Union, 
88 ; inaugm-ation, intention 
to hold Southern posts, 89 ; 
and Fort Sumter, 91 ; call 
for miUtia, 91 ; and border 
States, 95; as chief asset of 
the North, 99, 194; and 
pubUc opinion, 99 ; arbitrary 
acts, 100; power and per- 
severance in the war, 100, 
116, 142, 183, 184; lack of 
miUtary training, 101 ; offers 
command to Lee, 101 ; and 
McClellan's inactivity, 107; 
and Grant, 113; and Mc- 
Clellan and Peninsular cam- 
paign, 113-116; public faith 
in, 117, 131, 138, 142, 177, 
184; and McClellan after 
second Bull Run, 119; study 
of public opinion on slavery, 
121 ; poUcy of gradual com- 



pensated emancipation, 123- 
125, 136-138, 182n.; de- 
velopment and issue of pre- 
Uminary Emancipation Proc- 
lamation, 125-128; reply to 
Greeley's "Prayer," 126; de- 
light in Artemus Ward, 127, 
129 ; adheres to emancipation 
poUcy, final Proclamation, 
132 ; on constitutional ques- 
tion in Proclamation, 133n.- 
135n. ; removes McClellan, 
138 ; appointment of Burn- 
side, 139, 141 ; and Congress 
after Fredericksburg, 141 
appointment of Hooker, 143 
appointment of Meade, 146 
W. H. Russell's opinion, 160 
and Russell, 161 ; and Trent 
affair, 163, 166; British opin- 
ion, 175-177, 178n. ; reelec- 
tion, 188-190 ; assassination, 
191 ; Whitman, Punch and 
Bright on assassination, 192n. 

London Daily News, sympathy 
for the North, 161. 

London Times, belief in South- 
ern success, 156 ; influence, 
157 ; Russell as American 
correspondent, 157-161 ; and 
Trent affair, 167. 

Louisiana, secession, 77. 

Lowell, J. R., on Peace Con- 
gress, 75 ; on McClellan, 108 ; 
on failure of Peninsular cam- 
paign, 116; on effect of 
Trent affair, 168, on Lincoln, 
184. 

Lyons, Lord, and Trent affair, 
166. 

Macaulat, Lord, on Uncle 

Tom's Cabin, 19. 
McClellan, G. B., commands 

Union army, as organizer, 

107; inactivity, 108, 113; 

Peninsulaj: campaign, 114- 



INDEX 



203 



116 ; troops withdrawn, 117; 
restored to command, popu- 
larity in army, 118; Antio- 
tam campaign, neglected op- 
portunity, lli>-121 ; removed, 
138. 

Madison, James, on slavery, 6. 

March to the sea, 190. 

Maryland, does not secede, 95. 

Mason, J. M., Fugitive Slave 
Law, 17, 18; Trent affair, 
162-166. 

Meade, G. G., commands army, 
Gettysburg, 146-148. 

Mediation, Napoleon's policy, 
141, 171; British policy 
(1862), abrupt change, 171- 
175 ; England as obstacle to 
European offer, 181. 

Meredith, George, on closing of 
Civil War, 193n. 

Merrimac- Monitor fight. 111. 

Mexican War, as Southern 
war, 11. 

Mill, J. S., on Civil War, 2. 

Missouri, and slavery in Kansas, 
31, 32; does not secede, 95. 

Missouri Compromise, 21 ; re- 
peal, 23, 24 ; Northern con- 
demnation of repeal, 26, 28, 
30; declared void by Su- 
preme Court, 42; suggested 
restoration, 71, 74. 

Mobile Bay, battle, 189. 

Mommsen, Theodor, on slavery 
in Rome. 6, 86. 

Moniior-Merrimac &gh.t. 111. 

Napoleon III, and Civil War, 
141, 171, 181. 

Nationalism as issue in Civil 
War, 5. 

Navy, Merrimac- Monitor duel, 
111; capture of New Orleans, 
112; Confederate English- 
built vessels, 169, 179; battle 
of Mobile Bay, 189. 



Nebraska, expected free-state 
organization, 31. 

Neutrahty, British proclama- 
tion, 152; Trent affair as 
violation of right, 161-168; 
building of Confederate ves- 
sels as violation of duty, 169, 
179. 

New Mexico, free territory 
under Mexican law, 7 ; Com- 
promise of 1850, 16. 

New Orleans, capture, 111, 

New York Tribune, political 
influence, 30. 

Norton, C. E., disheartened 
(1862), 118/t. ; on possible 
war with England, I67n. ; 
development of faith in Lin- 
coln, 184n. ; on capture of 
Atlanta, 189n. 

Nullification movement, 3. 

Palmerston, Lord, on issues 
of Civil War, 154 ; belief in 
Southern success, 156 ; and 
mediation, 171, 172, 174. 

Peace Congress, 75. 

Peninsular campaign, 113-116; 
effect on the North, 116; 
withdrawal of troops, 117. 

Pickett, G. E., charge at Gettys- 
burg, 147. 

Pittsburg Landing, battle, 112. 

Pope, John, command, 117; 
second Bull Run campaign, 
118. 

Popular sovereignty, doctrine, 
25. 

Population, greater increase in 
North, 10; of North and 
South (1860), 95. 

Pottawatomie massacre, 35. 

Punch, on Lincoln, 192«. 

Reconstruction, probable ef- 
fect of Lincoln's gradual 
emancipation policy, 137. 



204 



INDEX 



Republican party, formation, 
27-29; in election of 1856, 
platform, 39 ; and Dred 
Scott opinion, 42 ; and 
Douglas (1858), 46; in elec- 
tion of 1860, 62; and com- 
promise, 72-74 ; inabilitj^ of, 
to injure South, 80; logical 
development of antislavery 
policy during war, 123 ; un- 
favorable election (1862), 131. 

Richmond, capital of Confed- 
eracy, 95 ; capture, 190. 

Russell, John, Earl, on Civil 
War and slavery, 153 ; be- 
lief in Southern success, 156 ; 
and Trent affair, 166 ; on 
Alabama, 170, 179 ; and 
mediation, 172, 173 ; and 
Confederate rams, 180. 

Russell, W. H., on Union 
troops, 108; as correspond- 
ent of Times, 157 ; account 
of slave auction, 158 ; mis- 
taken ostracism for account 
of Bull Run, 159, 160; and 
Lincoln, 161. 

Saturday Review, beUef in 
Southern success, 156. 

Savannah, capture, 190. 

Scott, Winfield, on secession, 
87n. ; adheres to Union, 102. 

Secession, threats (1850), 16; 
of South CaroUna, , 65-68 ; 
defence of slavery as reason 
for, 66, 78, 80; progress, 
popular initiative, 77 ; con- 
stitutional basis, 78-80 ; polit- 
ical inexpediency, 80, 87; 
attitude of North, 87-89; 
action of Virginia, 95 ; of 
other border States, 95. 

Senate, sectional equilibrium, 
11, 43, 55. 

Seven Pines, battle, 115. 

Seward, W. H., and formation 



of Republican party, 28; 
and Douglas (1858), 46; 
irrepressible-conflict speech, 
55 ; and nomination for 
President (1860), 61, 63; 
and compromise (1861), 69, 
70, 72 ; and Emancipation 
Proclamation, 126. 

Sharpe's rifles for Kansas, 34. 

Sheridan, P. H., as general, 
182. 

Sherman, W. T., as general, 
182 ; Atlanta campaign, 189 ; 
march to the sea, 190 ; 
Carolina campaign, 191. 

Shiloh, battle, 112. 

Silver, free coinage controversy, 
4. 

Slavery, as cause of Civil War, 
2-7, 76, 80, 136, 153; early 
Southern opponents, 6, 12 ; 
theories of territorial, 7 ; 
losing game, 10 ; effect on 
Southern population, 10 ; and 
Mexican war, 11 ; balance in 
Senate, 11, 43, 55; effect of 
cotton gin, 12 ; as blessing, 
13 ; effect of abolitionists, 13 ; 
character of large slave- 
holders, 14-16, 86; Com- 
promise of 1850, 16, 21; 
Fugitive Slave Law, 17 ; 
effect of Uncle Tom's Cabin, 
19-21 ; Missouri Compromise, 
21 ; Kansas-Nebraska Bill, 
repeal of Missouri Com- 
promise, 23-27 ; and forma- 
tion of Republican party, 
27-29; Kansas contest, 31- 
36, 43-45 ; Republican plat- 
form on territorial (1856), 
39; (I860), 63; Dred Scott 
opinion, right in territories, 
41-43 ; Lincoln-Douglas de- 
bates, 49-55^; Davis's de- 
mand for protection of, in 
territories, 55; desire for 



INDEX 



205 



tropical annexations, 55 ; at- 
tempt to revive slave-trade, 
56 ; Harper's Ferry raid, 
56-59 ; meaning of Lincoln's 
election 65 ; defence of, as 
reason for secession, 66, 78, 
80 ; proposed compromise on 
territorial (1861), 70-75; in- 
ability of Republicans to 
injure established, 80 ; Con- 
federate Constitution on, 81- 
83 ; as corner-stone of Con- 
federacy, 84 ; difficulty of 
Southern abolition, 85-87 ; 
Congress passes amendment 
to guarantee, in States, 88 ; 
Lincoln's study of public 
opinion on, 121 ; abolished 
in territories and District of 
Columbia, 122; policy of 
gradual compensated eman- 
cipation, 122-125, 134n., 136- 
138, 182n. ; logical develop- 
ment of Republican policy 
concerning, 123 ; Emancipa- 
tion Proclamation, 125-128, 
131-136 ; fidelity of slaves 
during war, 135n. ; military 
advantages to South, 135?!. ; 
negro troops in Union army, 
136; British attitude, 152, 
158, 167, 175, 177. 

Slave-trade, foreign, prohibited, 
12 ; attempt to revive foreign, 
56 ; Confederate prohibition 
of foreign, 82 ; W. H. Russell 
on slave auction, 158. 

Slidell, John, Trent affair, 
162-166. 

Smith, Goldwin, on cotton 
famine, 156. 

South Carolina, nullification, 
3 ; and election of Lincoln, 
secession, 65-68 ; economic 
effects of secession, 67. 

Speaker contest in House of 
Representatives (1859), 59. 



Spcrlnlnr, sympathy for the 
North, 161. 

Spurgeon, C. H., and Emanci- 
pation Proclamation, 175. 

Stanton, E. M., and Peninsular 
campaign, 115; and second 
Bull Run, 117; at cabinet 
meeting on Emancipation 
Proclamation, 127. 

Stephens, A. H., on slavery as 
corner-stone of Confederacy, 
84. 

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, Uncle 
Tom's Cabin, 19-21. 

Stubbs, William, on great men 
in conflict, 195n. 

Sumner, Charles, Brooks's as- 
sault on, 36-38 ; on Chan- 
cellorsville, 145n. ; and Trent 
affair, 163. 

Sumter, Fort, attack and sur- 
render, 90. 

Supreme Court, Dred Scott 
opinion, 41-43 ; unfavorable 
to RepubUcan party (1861), 
80. 

Taney, R. B., Dred Scott 
opinion, 41. 

Tariff, and Civil "War, 3, 82, 
154 ; and nullification, 3. 

Taj'lor, Tom, on Lincoln, 192n. 

Territories, theory of slavery 
in, 7 ; Missouri Compromise, 
21 ; repeal of Compromise, 
popular sovereignty, 23, 25 ; 
Republican platform on 
slavery (1856), 39; (1860), 
63 ; Dred Scott opinion, right 
of slavery in, 41 ; Davis's 
demand for protection of 
slavery in, 55 ; proposed 
restoration of Missouri Com- 
promise, 71, 74; slavery 
abohshed in, 122. 

Thomas, G. H., adheres to 
Union, 102 ; as general, 182. 



206 



INDEX 



Trent affair, seizure by Wilkes, 
161 ; Northern rejoicing over, 
162, 163 ; Lincoln and, 163 ; 
mistake in not immediately 
releasing prisoners, 164 ; Brit- 
ish demands, 165 ; release of 
prisoners, 166 ; effect on 
pubUc opinion, 166-168. 

Trollops, Anthony, on MoCIel- 
lan, 108. 

Twain, Mark, humor, 130. 

Uncle Tom's Cabin, effect, 
17-21. 

VlCKSBURG CAMPAIGN, 148- 

151 ; as decisive event, 151, 

181. 
Virginia, and Peace Congress, 

75 ; secession, 95. 
Virginia campaign of 1864, 

186-188. 

Ward, Artemus, Lincoln's de- 



light in, 127, 129; character 
of humor, 129. 

Washington, threatened by 
Jackson (1862), 115; Early's 
raid, 188. 

Webster, Daniel, on effect of 
abohtionists, 13 ; Compro- 
mise of 1850, 16. 

Welles, Gideon, on Lincoln and 
restoration of McClellan to 
command, 119n. ; on Emanci- 
pation Proclamation, 128n. ; 
on McClellan's inactivity, 
138n. ; on Chancellorsville, 
145n. ; on Gettysburg cam- 
paign, 146n. ; and Trent 
affair, 163 ; despondency 
(1864), 188n. 

Whig party and formation of 
Republican party, 28. 

Whitman, Walt, on assassina- 
tion of Lincoln, 192. 

Wilkes, Charles, Trent affair, 
161-163. 



This Index waa made for me by David M. Matteson. 




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